REPLY to Patrick Gleason
From: Senator Daylin Leach

I'm not certain who my "buddies in Harrisburg" are. But I'll do my best to respond to what I can understand of Mr. Gleason’s argument.

Mr. Gleason objects to my assertion that people shouldn't sign a pledge to NEVER increase taxes because such a pledge is inevitably made without knowing what spending cuts honoring such a pledge would require. He says two things in this regard.

First, he claims that there are "barriers" to knowing this information, which is my point exactly. If you don't now know all the information you will need to know in the future, why take some silly pledge that ties your hands when the facts become available? In essence you are pledging to do something in the future regardless of what the facts may be at the time. Maybe that's how Mr. Gleason’s "buddies" do business, but it doesn't seem very prudent.

Second, he suggests I should instead ask what families and business who are "struggling" (presumably I don't have to ask those not struggling) will have to sacrifice in order to pay higher taxes. That is a legitimate question. It should be asked. And the answer to that question will dictate what spending and taxes should occur. That is why I have not taken a pledge to ALWAYS raise taxes. So Mr. Gleason suggests a question, but is then indifferent to the answer.

I would note that when asked, the people who Mr. Gleason refers to often do support paying more in taxes. Here's a small example. In Montgomery County a few years ago there was a referendum where people were asked if they would be willing to pay higher taxes to preserve open space. Almost 80% said yes. A Quinnipiac Poll taken just a couple of months ago found that a strong majority of Pennsylvanians support paying more taxes to avoid cuts in education and health care.

Finally, Mr. Gleason makes an argument that I do struggle to understand. I had said that the analogy frequently used by those on the right about running government like a family is misapplied. When a family is trying to make ends meet, it of course cuts out discretionary spending on things like movies and vacations. But before it cuts out core expenditures, like say…feeding the kids, it looks into finding new sources of revenue.

Similarly, while the government must, and should, and did make cuts, there are certain core functions like say…feeding the kids, that it must avoid cutting for the good of society. So before such core functions are cut, government must look for new sources of revenue.

Mr. Gleason then somehow claims that in making this argument I am calling for “burglarizing” and “robbing”. I think a reasonable response to this would be HUH????. But I’ll try to do better.

If Mr. Gleason is claiming that taxation is stealing, he is, with all due respect, truly veering off into serious wack-job territory. Even those furthest on the right support SOME taxes, if only to enforce laws against abortion and provide police protection to Tea-Partiers. Even Glenn Beck hasn’t called for the complete elimination of all government and the institution of full-on anarchy. And once you support ANY taxes, you, as one of the thieves, can no longer sanctimoniously claim that taxes are stealing.

All of this goes to say what I said in my original post. There are times when it is appropriate to cut taxes and times when it is appropriate to raise them, depending on the circumstances. So taking some silly pledge that you will never raise taxes no matter what the circumstances is irresponsible.


Daylin


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A Response for Senator Daylin Leach

From Patrick Gleason

Yesterday PA Senator Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery) added a new entry to his blog in which he explains why he believes Senator Jane Orie (R-Allegheny) was “foolish and irresponsible” for ever signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge that she broke last week with her vote for the budget.
Leach laments that the Pledge “does not mention which services the signer is willing to cut in tough times.” Here Leach is simply regurgitating the same tired line repeated by tax hike proponents who like to ask, “what would you cut from the state budget?” Never mind the barriers to getting all of the information necessary to best answer that query, I have a better question for Leach – what should the families and businesses already struggling to pay the bills cut from their budgets or sacrifice in order to pay higher taxes?

Leach opines that “it makes as much sense for a state legislator to pledge never to raise a tax as it does for a family breadwinner to pledge never to seek additional income.”

Let’s ignore the fact that this analogy doesn’t really work unless you believe that the proper role of government is to be the provider or “breadwinner” for all. Maybe Leach does. However, sticking with Leach’s family budget theme, let’s consider a better analogy for the state budget process. Here we have the equivalent of a family spending as much as it wants, with no regard for their income, savings, or the job stability of the bread winner(s). Once means have been exhausted the family, rather than stop spending, they proceed to burglarize area businesses and steal from neighbors to cover the bills. That’s how Leach and his buddies do budgeting in Harrisburg.

Fun work if you can get it

The Americans For Tax Reform, a conservative anti-tax advocacy group, is blasting my colleague, state Senator Jane Orie (R–Allegheny), for breaking their Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose any and all tax increases based on her vote last week in favor of the state budget.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) was founded in 1986 to help promote the Reagan administration’s efforts to change the tax code. It is run by Grover Norquist, who also holds leadership positions with the National Rifle Association, the American Conservative Union, and – interestingly – the Islamic Free Market Institute (his wife is a former director). The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is meant to be an agreement between a candidate and the voters. Signers agree they will “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” Over two hundred members of Congress and over a thousand state legislators have taken the pledge. Norquist's stated purpose in circulating this pledge is to shrink government to the size where you can "drown it in a bathtub".

I am a freshman senator, and while I like and have worked with Senator Orie, I can't pretend to know her well enough to understand why she signed this pledge. I imagine it was a campaign decision. It's not hard to score points with voters by promising them you'll never raise their taxes. Conveniently the pledge does not mention which services the signer is willing to cut in tough times. In any event, Senator Orie was right to disregard the pledge when faced with a budget crisis that mandated increasing state revenue to continue core government functions.

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge is foolish and irresponsible. From a governing standpoint, it makes as much sense for a state legislator to pledge never to raise a tax as it does for a family breadwinner to pledge never to seek additional income. No one can predict the future or divine what policies will be called for in a changing world. The pledge only serves to appeal the most dedicated anti-tax proponents on the right side of the political spectrum. There could be similar pledges on the left. I could, for instance, pledge to oppose, under any circumstances, any cuts to services which would hurt children or the elderly. This would be equally foolhardy.

When common sense dictates that candidates win by appealing to centrist voters, why make such a pledge? The answer is that common sense has gone out the window in many of our legislative elections. The broken process by which we draw the boundaries of legislative districts – commonly called Gerrymandering – has created a system where the party membership of the winning candidate is predetermined in nearly every race. In such a system, an incumbent legislator worries less about losing in November than they worry about losing in April – to a member of their own party in a primary election. Because the most conservative Republicans and the most progressive Democrats are most likely to vote in primaries, what you’d think would happen has happened: the center has all but ceased to exist in legislative bodies.

Which brings us back to Senator Orie and the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The day after she voted for the Senate’s revenue package, conservatives in Pennsylvania hammered her for breaking the pledge. Grover Norquist himself called her a “tax hiker” and said Pennsylvanians “should know who went against their promise to voters.” Anyone thinking about running further to the right of Orie in the next primary has been handed an enormous gift. All because of a silly pledge, written decades ago, by somebody who may never have even been to Pennsylvania, and certainly didn’t understand our budget process and the challenges we would face in 2009.

Legislators need to be flexible to be responsible. We must be prepared to made decisions in the best interests of our constituents that reflect the realities of our times – even if it means casting tough votes. Senator Orie had the guts to do this, and she should be applauded.

But the next time someone, in the process of asking for your vote, makes a pledge to do or never do something – no matter what – ask them if they can see the future. Because if they can't, they have no business signing a pledge designed to appease ideologues who have the luxury of never having to govern themselves.


Daylin