Rethinking Their Pledge
Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, has had the good sense to demand an end to the $5 billion annual tax credit to makers of corn ethanol, a wasteful subsidy to farm states that is also dubious environmental policy. For his outspokenness, Senator Coburn was pilloried by anti-government activists of his own party who cannot stand the idea of more revenues flowing into the federal Treasury. But he and a few others in the Senate are holding fast, suggesting that at least some Republicans are willing to break with party orthodoxy to reduce the long-term budget deficit.
The loudest criticism came from Grover Norquist, whose group, Americans for Tax Reform, is the author of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge that has become a sacred covenant for virtually anyone wishing to run as a Republican. More than 95 percent of the Republicans in Congress have signed it (including Senator Coburn), as have many Republican governors and state lawmakers.
The pledge is often thought of as an agreement never to vote for raising taxes for any reason, but it goes even further than that. Those who sign it also vow never to eliminate any tax deductions or credits (like the handout to ethanol makers), unless the resulting increase in revenues is offset, dollar for dollar, by further tax cuts.
The pledge is really less about keeping taxes low than it is about holding down government revenues, which prevent the growth of government services. Mr. Norquist has famously said his goal is to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Mr. Norquist can afford to be candid about his fierce aversion to government services, since he does not have to run for office with the votes of people who like those services. The Republican lawmakers who have joined his congregation, however, are less forthright about the effect of their policies. They go around lulling constituents with phony mantras like “Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem,” as if cutting spending is the only conceivable solution to lowering the deficit.
This purity finally ran into a tough-minded pragmatist in Senator Coburn. Though his zeal to eliminate many worthy government programs is still excessive, he is right to see the wastefulness in the ethanol giveaway — and the extremism of Mr. Norquist’s position. Senator Coburn’s spokesman has even described Mr. Norquist as “the chief cleric of Sharia tax law.”
Senator Coburn is also a member of the “gang of six” senators that has been trying to find a bipartisan way to reduce the nation’s debt. He and the two other Republicans in the group, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Michael Crapo of Idaho, say they are opposed to raising tax rates but hope to rewrite the tax code in a way that brings in more revenue by eliminating many unnecessary tax breaks and broadening the tax base.
That, at least, represents the beginning of a useful conversation. It could very well mean that the rich would pay more in taxes. Which is why Mr. Norquist, in full grand-inquisitor style, has demanded that Senator Coburn drop out of the gang.
His influence, happily, seems to be on the wane. The three senators have reminded Mr. Norquist that their highest oath is not to him or some abstract pledge, but to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
A Hole in the Endangered Species Act
As part of its budget bill, Congress approved a brief rider, 11 lines long, that removes gray wolves in Idaho and Montana from the protections of the Endangered Species Act. The rider overturns a recent court ruling, prohibits further judicial review and cannot be good for the wolf. But the worst part is that it sets a terrible precedent — allowing Congress to decide the fate of animals on the list.
The law’s purpose is to base protections on science. Now that politics has been allowed to trump science when it comes to the gray wolf, which species will be next?
The rider’s sponsors, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, were responding to the demands of ranchers, who sometimes lose livestock to wolves, and hunters, who complain that wolves reduce deer and elk populations.
Sadly and surprisingly, they were abetted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who declared last month that he would accept what he called a “legislative solution” to the status of the wolf in the Rocky Mountains. One Interior Department official has argued that without this concession, the rider might well have been far more radical — possibly removing wolves everywhere from protection.
The wolf has been a subject of litigation ever since it was reintroduced in the mid-1990s. One of Mr. Salazar’s first acts as secretary was to de-list the animal in Idaho and Montana, arguing that populations had recovered and that the states could now manage them. A federal judge overturned his ruling, as well as a compromise plan that Mr. Salazar worked out with environmental groups.
Idaho and Montana plan to allow controlled hunts. The best hope for the wolves is that the states adhere to their management plans and not let the hunts get out of control. The courts can only stand by, but the Interior Department must hold the states to the terms of a five-year review process required by their management plans.
As for Mr. Salazar, he has made it harder to uphold the integrity of a law that has withstood attacks from industry, ranchers, real estate developers and their political allies. Other protected species like the grizzly bear could now face their own “legislative solution.” For the sake of his own reputation as a conservationist, Mr. Salazar has to hope that Congress’s meddling stops with the wolves.
Do You Think It’s Because They Liked Florida?
House Republicans are seeking to abolish the federal Election Assistance Commission — as if the nation is fully recovered from the hanging-chad nightmare of 2000. The 9-year-old commission was created in bipartisan Congressional resolve to repair the nation’s crazy quilt of tattered election standards and faltering machinery.
The commission was charged with upgrading the mechanics of voting by certifying electoral equipment, channeling needed federal aid and guidance to states, and developing a national mail-in voter registration system. After a slow start, it has made progress as the 2012 elections loom. But there is still a lot more that needs repairing.
Representative Gregg Harper, a Mississippi Republican and the elections subcommittee chairman, nevertheless insists that the commission “is no longer essential” and is leading the drive to flat-line it for a savings of $18 million. Surreally, a related Republican bill would transfer the agency’s mandate to the Federal Election Commission — Washington’s nonpareil in agency dysfunction. That would only invite partisan standoff and voting scandal.
The Election Assistance Commission should have been focused earlier on pushing all states to require a paper trail with their post-chad electronic voting machines. But it has tested voting systems for accuracy, and it oversees the special requirements of military and disabled voters. It could make more progress if turf-minded state officials were more open to its valuable studies on better ballot design. Far from going out of the business, the commission needs renewed support from Congress. For the sake of credible elections, the House gambit should be rebuffed.
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