Public Policy and Governance – Page 323

Car Talk

When the federal government decided to bail out Chrysler and GM, I’ll admit I was torn. I am inherently skeptical of “too big to fail,” and I’m convinced that we have way too much corporate welfare. I’m a believer in free enterprise, defined as a genuinely level playing field, where private businesses all play by the same rules, and sink or swim on their own merits. But I also recognized that we were in the midst of a recession that might well have become a depression. The economy was so fragile–and the probable loss of American jobs that would accompany bankruptcy was so massive–that we really didn’t have a choice. I figured the taxpayers would lose a lot of money, but on balance, that would be cheaper than a depression.

I was wrong.

Yesterday, Chrysler repaid the nearly $5.9 billion lent to it by the administration, including fees and interest payments — and it did so six years ahead of schedule. Not only has Chrysler paid us back, but together, GM and Chrysler have added 115,000 new jobs since emerging from reorganization.

It was a gutsy call, and it paid off. But I’m sure the “Party of No” will explain it away, or credit the Bush Administration, just as they’ve tried to do with respect to another gutsy call–taking out Bin Ladin.

Robin Hood, Willly Sutton and Tax Policy

Back in the 1950s, there was a concerted effort to keep schoolchildren from reading “Robin Hood,” because the story exalted a communist–Robin Hood, after all, took from the rich to give to the poor. (We are not the only generation to live with widespread paranoia.)

The notion that taxes are robbery has a long and inglorious history in this country. Rather than thinking about taxes as the dues we pay for civilization, taxes have been framed as extortion. Progressive taxation, especially, is characterized (in Ayn Rand fashion) as robbing the deserving, productive rich to feed the unproductive mobs of poor. This myth has endured despite the fact that there is no empirical evidence supporting the notion that lower taxes on the rich spur job creation, and in the face of the truly obscene paychecks going to the “titans of finance” whose credit default swaps and other financial chicanery produced nothing of value and threw the country into recession.

This morning, we awoke to see that the Congressional Republicans are proposing dramatic cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. As my husband observed, the GOP evidently has no problem taxing the poor. He’s right–taking medical care from the elderly, poor and disabled is simply a tax of another name.

The proponents of this “reverse Robin Hood” taxation are both heartless and stupid. They are heartless because they are attacking the most vulnerable in order to protect the pocketbooks of the most affluent, who are currently paying the lowest percentage of their incomes in taxes in more than 50 years. They are stupid because there is no way to balance the budget on the backs of those who have little or nothing.

When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied “Because that’s where the money is.” Any genuine effort to reduce the deficit would take a lesson from Willie.

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To Your Health…..

Federalism has many virtues, but it also makes some problems more difficult to solve. I don’t care how much your local city council cares about air pollution, there isn’t a whole lot they–or even your state legislature, assuming you have a more enlightened one than we do here in Indiana–can do about it. Health policies likewise tend to require state or national action; there isn’t a lot that local communities can do.

But there are some things we can do locally, and there really isn’t any excuse for failing to do them. Cities and states can encourage healthy lifestyles and physical fitness by providing well-tended parks, by increasing bike lanes, and by banning smoking in public places. These measures not only promote public health, they ultimately save money by reducing Medicaid and similar costs.

The Ballard Administration has at least responded to calls for additional bike lanes (although those downtown, where I live, are considerably less than optimal–the ones on New York Street were evidently painted by someone who was drunk or otherwise seriously incapacitated). Otherwise, not so much. Far from expanding opportunities for recreation, our parks have been shamefully neglected. And worst of all, Ballard has consistently blocked efforts to ban smoking in public places.

The Mayor’s refusal to honor his campaign promise to sign a smoking-ban ordinance is particularly galling, not just because he did a 180-degree turn on the issue once he was elected, but because smoking bans are a low-cost, highly effective way to improve public health.

There are essentially two arguments against smoking bans. Bar owners worry that business will suffer if customers cannot smoke in their establishments. Other opponents of the bans argue that no one has to patronize a bar or restaurant–that if smoke bothers you, you can just go somewhere else. The evidence from other cities that have passed these bans should comfort the bar owners–far from diminishing, in many places business actually improved when nonsmoking customers weren’t assaulted by the smell of “eau de stale cigarette.” And the argument about choice ignores the very real health hazard smoking poses for employees. (When asked about the impact on workers, Mayor Ballard dismissed employees as “transients” whose health clearly was not a concern.)

Hint: Telling hard-working waiters and bartenders that they should just get another job if smoke bothers them ignores the realities of the current job market, among other things.

Cities are in a world of fiscal hurt right now. At a time when there isn’t money to do many of the things that would improve our neighborhoods, a smoking ban is a virtually cost-free way to improve public health and make our public spaces more pleasant at the same time. Polls show an overwhelming majority of residents favoring such a ban, and in fact, when he ran for Mayor, Ballard supported the policy.

All of this makes the Mayor’s current, stubborn opposition hard to understand. If he has reasons for his abrupt about-face, he has yet to articulate them.

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Something Old, Something New…

Reading the news lately, I was reminded of the old rhyme for brides: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”

Something old? This morning’s Star had a story about the nearly three million dollars in fees being paid by the Ballard Administration for services in connection with the ill-conceived fifty year lease of Indianapolis parking meters. This may have been a bad deal for the city, but law firms and mortgage bankers did quite well. I believe this gets filed under “blessed are the deal makers, for they shall inherit the goodies” or perhaps the even older “he who has, gets.”

Something new? I vote for the absolute brazenness with which the current Indiana legislature has favored the haves over the have-nots. Although people who can afford to make contributions and pay lobbyists have always had an edge, this year the majority has been absolutely shameless. The rhetoric has been about “shared sacrifice” at a time when money is tight. So they reduced corporate tax rates and made up the difference by requiring “shared sacrifices” from the most vulnerable: eliminating dental coverage for most Medicaid recipients, cutting the number of children who will be eligible for CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (despite the fact that 75% of that money comes from the federal government), increasing co-pays for infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities, and depriving poor women of desperately-needed healthcare by de-funding Planned Parenthood.

Something borrowed? Citizens Action Coalition issued a news release yesterday about legislative approval of higher profits for utilities, allowing shareholders of those utilities to “borrow” from the school corporations and municipalities–and ultimately the taxpayers–that will have to pay higher rates. That’s small change next to the smoke and mirrors that accompanied the Ballard Administration’s deal to sell the water company to Citizens. The deal allowed the administration to get a big up-front payment it could use to pave streets and make infrastructure improvements. That “saved” tax dollars, which will have to be “borrowed” from rate-payers later.

Something blue? Indiana citizens.

File Under “Kick Them When They’re Down”

The more we see of Paul Ryan’s “innovative” budget proposal, the more mean-spirited it gets.

Take Food Stamps–another target for “savings.” According to Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos, Ryan would change food stamp dollars to block grants, which would be funded at only 80 percent of the current level of spending. “That means cuts of $127 billion between now and 2021. To achieve that would require dropping millions of low-income Americans from SNAP rolls or cutting their benefits or some combination of both. Ryan doesn’t specify. This “reform”—astonishing what gets that label these days—would also impose new restrictions on recipients, including time limits on how long they would be eligible to receive food stamps.”

We are just beginning to emerge from the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Thousands and thousands of hardworking, taxpaying Americans lost jobs and home, and a significant number of people who had always been self-sustaining found themselves on food stamps. Their needs, however, cannot compete with the need to protect the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of earners.

Ryan’s defenders will claim that these historically low tax rates will generate investment and translate into jobs. The evidence against that is overwhelming and compelling.

This is really an effort to dismantle the remnants of our already dangerously frayed social safety net–by self-proclaimed “Christians” who have no understanding of their own religion’s teachings, and no empathy for anyone who doesn’t look just like them. And it is unforgivable.

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