Big Bucks Being Spent in the Buckeye State

Big Bucks Being Spent in the Buckeye State
by Marc Schare, Guest Contributor

November 19, 2002

Contributor Marc Schare It seems that every commentator from Rush Limbaugh to James Carville is analyzing the election of 2002 as some kind of political obituary to the modern Democratic Party, but if you look past the number of D's and R's in the United States Congress and the Ohio General Assembly, and if you focus on the substance of how each incumbent governed and each candidate campaigned, you would be hard pressed to find evidence of a rightward movement in political thinking in our country and our state. Indeed, there is compelling evidence that our country did not move rightward resulting in a Republican victory but rather, the Republican Party moved to the left, and not by an insignificant amount.

In Ohio, we reelected a Republican Governor by a wide margin and our state reelected large Republican majorities in the Ohio Assembly, Ohio Senate and Supreme Court. You would think that Ohio must be one of the most fiscally conservative, low tax states in the country, but you would be wrong. Bob Taft (and George Voinovich before him) and the Republican majorities in the General Assembly have presided over the biggest increase in state spending in a generation and the resulting tax increases to support this spending have made Ohio the 9th highest taxed state in the country. Despite this enormous level of spending, Governor Taft won the election going away and Republican candidates were reelected in droves, so the obvious question is - how did they do it?

Did Ohio Republicans campaign on the core Republican issues of tax cuts and reducing the size and scope of government? You betcha. In Franklin County, for example, Linda Reidelbach labeled her opponent as a tax and spend liberal, which may or may not be true, but we know that Rep. Reidelbach was part of the GOP majority that voted to raise the Ohio Personal Income Tax by 7% in the last session. Bob Taft and Senator David Goodman, somewhat disingenuously, campaigned on the fact that they raised homestead exemption limits (thus, cutting property taxes) for seniors, but never mentioned the fact that the average low-income senior, even if they qualified for the exemption, would see tax relief of around $50/year, small consolation to seniors who have seen CD rates drop from 7% to 2% in one year while property taxes have seen double digit increases in many areas. In the meantime, the GOP raised taxes on corporations, cigarette smokers and other groups to balance the budget monster that was created by t -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Nationally, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate conspired to increase federal spending by 8.2% in Fiscal Year 2002 with discretionary spending up by a whopping 12.9%, all with the apparent approval of a President whose definition of 'compassionate conservatism' means 'spend money on everything'. To be sure, the war on terror contributed to these figures, but so did pork projects. In fact, according to the Citizens Against Government Waste watchdog group, fiscal 2002 brought us 8,341 projects in the 13 appropriations bills, an increase of 32 percent over last year's total of 6,333 projects. The cost of these projects was $20.1 billion, or 9 percent more than last year's total of $18.5 billion.

Will it be any different now that the Republicans have 2 additional seats in the United States Senate? While no one can know for sure, we do know that many Republican Senate candidates, while campaigning on a platform of limiting the size of government and reducing wasteful government spending, simultaneously promoted increased federal spending on everything from transportation and education to Medicare and the environment. Indeed, many candidates boasted about bringing home a larger share of federal largess or made campaign promises to do so. One of the centerpieces of Doug Forrester's campaign in New Jersey, for example, was that he would bring back more of New Jersey's tax dollars in the form of federal funding. Clearly, while Republican Senate candidates talk about core Republican principals of less government and lower taxes, Republican Senators, past and future, believe that increased federal spending and pork barrel politics are required to maintain the viability of the party and their ability to win elections?

Fiscal conservatives must now face a few unpleasant facts. First, despite the results of the election of 2002, there is not yet an appetite in Columbus or Washington for significantly limiting the size of government or reducing government spending, and there won't be so long as their constituents reward legislators for 'bringing home the bacon'. Second, even in victory, the Republican Party is unwilling or unable to enact meaningful tax reform, meaning that the upper 10% of all income earners will continue to pay for at least 66% of the government, a condition that is not likely to change because the lower 50% of income earners only pay around 4% of the taxes and third, and perhaps most depressing, Republicans would not control the Senate and probably would have lost the House had it not been for 17 screwballs who figured out how to fly airplanes into buildings. There is simply no evidence that Election Day 2002 was caused by voters who decided that government must live within its means.

For this fiscal conservative, I'm hoping I'm wrong about why the Republican Party won this election and how the Republican Party will govern. I'm hoping that the Republican Party in Ohio and across this country will sieze the moment to reduce wasteful government spending, reform the ridiculous tax code that stifles economic growth, save Social Security by allowing partial privatization and stay true to the core principals of the party by promoting individual responsibility and minimal government intervention in our lives. I'm fearful that if Republicans don't do these things now, if they fail to distinguish themselves from their opponents, and if they blow this historic opportunity to influence public opinion on the fundamental issue of what Government is and is not, they may not get another chance for a generation. ***

Photo of Marc Schare courtesy of the author

Marc Schare is a small business owner is Columbus, OH. He became interested in public policy when he noticed that 'taxes' was both his biggest expense and most complicated chore. He writes tirelessly for the local paper advocating for fiscal responsibility in government because he knows that voter education is the best way to make sure that government serves the people and not the other way around.