Fitzsimon File

A funny thing happened to an anti-taxer on the way to a Governor’s mansion. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was the first budget director for President Bush and a champion of the tax cuts that Bush pushed through Congress. You know the mantra, government is too big, it spends too much, we should never raise taxes, etc.

Now that Daniels is a governor and forced to balance a state budget, he looks at things a little differently. Daniels recently proposed raising the Indiana state income tax by one percent on people who earn more than $100,000 a year. Apparently even the most virulent anti-government folks see things a different way when they actually understand the implications of slashing government programs with no regard for the impact on people and programs.

It is also interesting that Daniels’ decision is similar what the North Carolina legislature did in 2001. One of the taxes raised that year was the income tax paid by the state’s richest taxpayers. Governor Easley wants to let expire this year, claiming it is hurting economic development.

Setting targets

One of the important decisions made every legislative session that affects human service programs is not public and gets little attention. It’s when legislative leaders tell the budget subcommittees how money they have to work with.

The Health and Human Resources Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee of both the House and the Senate will begin meeting soon. At some point, usually after the April revenue figures come in, legislative leaders will decide how big the budget can be and set a target for each budget subcommittee.

That becomes an arbitrary limit on how much funding lawmakers are allowed to even propose for human service programs. Once the full budget bill is assembled, special rules govern the debate.

One of those rules prohibits legislators from cutting a program in one subcommittee’s area to fund a program in another area. That means no one is allowed to offer an amendment to reduce funding for a museum and use the money to pay for HIV/AIDS drugs. The only way to increase funding for HIV/AIDS drugs is to take the money away from another human service program.

It may sound like an arcane legislative procedure, but it is incredibly important and prevents a full debate on the budget. Legislative leaders need to change the way the budget is put together.

Either remove the arbitrary targets for committees or devise some way to debate and set them in public. And end the practice of restricting amendments to the budget.

It is all taxpayer’s money and ought to fund the programs and services that the majority of legislators support, no matter which subcommittee considered them.

It looks like a town hall meeting, but it’s not a town hall meeting. Is there anything more staged these days than the “town hall meetings” held by politicians to get publicity for an issue?

President Bush held one in Raleigh about social security not too long ago and Senator Richard Burr held one Tuesday to talk about the need for medical malpractice reform.

It is no secret that the audience for President Bush’s meeting was handpicked, but Burr’s get together provides an even more interesting view into the world of political speak and spin.

The News and Observer reports that more than 100 doctors showed up for the event billed by the North Carolina Medical Society as a town hall meeting.

A representative of a patients group opposing the reform plans of the medical society was told she could not attend the meeting. A patient hurt by medical malpractice was on the way, but turned around when notified that the meeting was not open.

Reportedly, the Burr folks told someone who asked about the refusal to let folks in that the event was not really a town hall meeting, it was just a meeting using the town hall format. Oh, well that clears it up.

Whatever your position in the medical malpractice debate, can’t we all agree to stop calling these staged events with restricted access town hall meetings? How about at least Fake Town Hall Meeting or Staged Town Hall Photo-Op?

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.