Iowa’s Republicans did a strange thing last week − they decided to make Iowa more like California. This was not, as optimists might have hoped, by attracting more tourism, growing international investment, seeking technology leadership, or adopting any other policy that might put Iowa on track to rival the world’s fourth-largest economy. Instead, they decided to imitate one of California’s most notoriously bad ideas: making it harder to raise taxes than to cut them.
The bad idea goes like this: what if income taxes could be lowered (and services cut) with a simple majority, but raising them (and increasing services) required a two-thirds supermajority?
This notion has been a bad penny in Republican circles since the 1990s, where it is red meat for campaigning on the evils of government and the “burdens” of taxation from which we all need “relief.” (More community-minded folk would argue that patriots should do their part to support our democratically elected government.) Adoption of these policies abruptly stopped 15 years ago, though; it became clear that a government couldn’t serve the people well when it could, practically speaking, only get smaller. But in a fit of late-session sleep deprivation, Iowa’s Republicans decided that we will vote on whether to adopt this failed policy through a constitutional amendment this November.
Blocking future governments from being able to raise money is foolish, wrongheaded, and anti-democratic.
And in Iowa at this moment, choking off future revenue is particularly foolish. Republicans have been cutting taxes while spending money we don’t have, manufacturing a problem that allowed them to siphon off emergency funds. Just this year, they have taken $1.2 billion from Iowa’s Taxpayer Relief Fund. They are bleeding our rainy day fund dry and ensuring it can’t be replaced with income taxes.
Instead, we will be forced to increase costs in other areas: fees. Property taxes. Sales taxes. Capital gains taxes. Cutting public services so that you wind up paying for them personally. On goes the drumbeat of privatization. There go the roads.
Worse, this is an egregiously anti-democratic proposal. It would allow lobbyists to keep the state legislature from carrying out the will of Iowans by convincing as few as 18 people (one-third of Iowa’s state senators) to block a tax increase. 18 people against a population of 3 million.
The United States already has a problem with turning popular will into real policy. A 20-year study conducted by Princeton University found that 90% of Americans have no impact on what policies the government implements. The ones who do decide? The donors. Imagine how much worse that will be when the donors need to convince only 18 people of their preferences.
Iowa, too, has failed to follow the will of its people. The most glaring example in the realm of taxes is Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy trust fund. The trust fund was created through a bipartisan amendment to the Iowa Constitution, supported by 90 percent of Iowa legislators and, when it went to the ballot in 2010, by 63 percent of Iowa voters. The amendment says that the next time the state raises sales taxes, a portion of that increase will go to the trust fund. The trust fund has no money in it, even as our water quality deteriorates and our cancer rates rise.
At least if our legislature has no choice but to raise money other ways than income taxes, maybe they’ll raise sales taxes and fund the trust.
Indeed, the great irony is this: if Democrats take over the legislature and cannot raise income taxes, there is a very easy and obvious way to refill state coffers. It is one of Republicans’ least favorite policies: a wealth tax. Elizabeth Warren’s two cents for billionaire tears may come back to Iowa after all.
So if you support good governance – or don’t want a wealth tax – vote against this amendment in November.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City and write at www.ourlibertiesweprize.com. And biannual time changes must be abolished.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Make Iowa California, say Iowa Republicans | Guest Column
Reporting by Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick, Special to the Press-Citizen / Ames Tribune
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