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If you spend any time rubbing elbows with Indiana’s ruling class, you’ll recognize the circular logic: “The solutions to our problems are not politically achievable, and in any case they are beyond local control.”
The first, of course, is the other party’s fault. The second is Washington’s in tying our legislators’ hands with mandates.
In short, nothing can be done; be grateful there are bright people in the Statehouse who understand that things could be worse — a plea of superfluousness, if you will.
What then? Do the ever more numerous federal diktats mean that a governor or a majority leader can do nothing but try to fashion ever more clever excuses?
Hoosiers, if public-opinion surveys are accurate, reject that. They see their situation as too grave to be finessed by the self-serving office-holder. They are demanding straight answers. The Democrats can’t manage that at all, and for the GOP it will require more than the garden-variety Lugar Republicanism.
So Far, So Bad
To be fair, the Indiana Senate already has done something about the debilitating effects of federal mandates. It has talked about them — and to commendable length. Last session it approved a resolution claiming “sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”
The bill’s 700 words included the most high-minded quotes from the Founding Fathers. The legislation, though, was meant for campaigning, not governing. It was nonbinding, of course, requiring no legislative courage and certainly no risk to anyone’s re-election. It was a petition to the federal to be less federal.
Meanwhile, representatives in Wisconsin, Texas and even New Jersey are putting their names on straightforward plans to get their citizens out of this mess — plans on which they are willing to bet their political careers, plans meant to realign economic incentives, not just push numbers around on a ledger.
Indiana, which retains a measure of common sense, is in a position to lead the nation in developing a model tax and regulatory structure, a simple one that keeps more decisions about using wealth in the hands and minds of its citizens and away from government.
A property-tax cap, another plan better for campaigning than governing, doesn’t do that. It merely jumps a legal hurdle to ensure Indianapolis a steady stream of revenue. It does not significantly change a key factor, i.e., how much of our money government takes.
The Elephant
in the Room
Governor Mitch Daniels, to his credit, does not hide behind the excuse that federal mandates have tied his hands. It is also true that he has yet to seriously address the elephant in his room, public education, which remains primarily a state rather than federal responsibility.
A challenge by Dr. Jeff Abbott, a member of Dr. Tony Bennett’s education transition team, sits unread on the Statehouse steps: “Shed most state and federal regulations and put more Hoosier tax dollars to work in the classroom actually teaching students.”
Abbott, in the spring 2008 edition of The Indiana Policy Review detailed a plan, “Freedom Schools,” for reducing the cost of Indiana public education without closing schools, firing teachers or otherwise impeding classroom learning.
In addition to providing students and parents more choice of curriculum and schools, the plan seeks to eliminate regulation for regulation’s sake. That, of course, would wipe out the larger part of federal aid and its accompanying mandates.
Abbott’s projected savings, mostly from eliminating the administrative positions necessary to comply with all those regulations, is more than $300 million a year based on a 2007 budget. That, combined with the $460 million the administration says it can affect in departmental cuts, brings Indiana within $197 million of eliminating the state budget deficit, all without dipping into hard-won reserves, closing schools or firing teachers.
And some of us, using only a slightly sharper pencil, believe the deficit could be made up entirely once Indiana was again truly sovereign. The Legislature could then take a step further and repeal the outdated, ill-conceived and hugely expensive Indiana Collective Bargaining Act.
Now that would be anything but superfluous.
T. Craig Ladwig is editor of The Indiana Policy Review. Contact him at cladwig@inpolicy.org.
