Column for June 7, 2007

But it's "for the children"...NOT!

A mantra is something that is a formula of invocation or incantation. We hear mantras constantly. The biggest, most effective mantra seems to be "it's for the children". Under the guise of being "for the children", we have gotten bonds for schools and recreation facilities. Do you know what else we have gotten "for the children"? Debt, and tons of it.

At the federal level, we have profligate spending beyond anything we could image and with more zeros at the end of the figure than we can count. Part of this just happened with a bill that is about to be signed by the President. Under the guise of funding the troops in the Middle East, Congress has put riders upon the bill that call for a higher minimum wage and more money for relief from Hurricane Katrina. Forget for the moment that the concept of having such a diverse amount of topics in the same bill is dishonest and purely political maneuvering. The government is stepping in once again to force businesses pay more for employee wages. Instead of helping families, this historically hurts families. I don't know of anyone trying to support an entire family on minimum wage. If they are, then they are unmotivated, unskilled, and need to seriously reconsider their employment, education, and life in general. I have been a minimum wage earner on several occasions and jobs in my lifetime. I just decided not to stay there.

Our own Congressman, Bob Etheridge, has proposed a bill to fund another $25 billion for school construction bonds "for the children". I am going to say this as straight forward as I can. Money is not and never has been the total answer to increasing the quality of education, nor are nice buildings. Private, charter, and parochial schools educate far more inexpensively than do public schools. Many do it without any money for facilities. When I was a child, we stuffed forty kids in a classroom with no problems, no cries of "overcrowding", and we still got a decent education.

Etheridge's proposal is one of the most irresponsible methods of funding. Not only will there be taxation and debt at the federal level to fund the bonds, but we at the local level will also have taxation and debt to pay back the bonds. We will be inflicted on both ends, paying for both the original funding as well as the payback. We would get hit twice for the same money, but it is "for the children", so apparently that makes it acceptable. That is abject stupidity and irresponsibility.

At the state level, the North Carolina budget will have approximately a $1 billion surplus. The translation is that we as taxpayers have overpaid the state by $1 billion. We are not going to get that money refunded to us, the ones who paid it. The General Assembly will instead find other ways of spending that money above and beyond their budgeted spending. Instead of lowering the tax rate because we paid too much for government, the state will not use that overage to pay down the state's debt load that our children are going to have to eventually pay. In addition, the state is still going to put higher taxes upon the shoulders of our children.

You read that right. The state has a billion dollars over and above the cost of running government in this state, yet the legislature wants to extend temporary taxes enacted in 2001 for yet a third time. Also, we will be seeing fee increases, most notably on the insurance industry, corporate welfare, and targeted tax breaks totaling $94 million. But wait, there's more! There are $28 million worth of fees proposed that the North Carolina citizens will be hit with by the state. That means that the debt will continue, taxes will rise, we won't get our money back from the overpayment of existing taxes, and fees (another form of taxation) will continue to go up.

If lawmakers really were "for the children", they would cut spending, work to slash debt, keep money in taxpayer pockets where it is needed, and stop saddling our children with increased taxes and government debt. A mantra is just that, and is apparently spoken but not enacted.