Make-believe politics

(X – Y) > X:  If you can believe this mathematical formula is true, then you are proponent of most of what Governor Brownback is proposing this year.  Whether it is tax policy, school funding, Medicare reform, or state employee retirement his ideas always start with the premise that by making things smaller they will be larger.  It’s a kind of magic.

Let’s take taxes as a for instance.  He is a proponent of the Laffer tax policies.   Arthur Laffer was an advisor to President Reagan and is famous for his theory called the “Laffer Curve” and supply-side economics; that if your reduce taxes on the rich there will be more taxes collected.  Those policies have been around for thirty years and we still have not seen one shred of objective evidence that they work.  In fact, if they were true, after a decade of the Bush tax cuts why haven’t we seen personal income increase, unemployment decrease, and the economy grow at a robust rate?  Could it be that the tax cuts have only made corporations and business more profitable and encouraged the export of jobs?  If we are going to call the economic elite in this country “job creators,” then those elites have failed miserably.  The fact of the matter is tax cuts to the most wealthy and successful have accomplished only one outcome:  to widen the wealth gap between the rich and the poor and to shrink the middle class.

The Governor also wants us to believe that if we hire private insurance companies to provide Medicaid coverage we will reduce our Medicaid expenses.  Medicaid costs are determined by three variables:

• How many people are eligible for the program,
• How much medical service they will need,
• How much we will pay the providers for those services.

Governor Brownback and his Lt. Governor Dr. Jeff Colyer have said their reform will not cut eligibility (same number of people), and will not cut the providers reimbursements (same cost for service), and will pay hundreds of millions in premiums to insurance companies to operate a managed care system (remember HMO’s), and we will save money.  Apparently he has found a magic potion to make sure all those eligible people will not be as sick as they were before.  How else to you explain the formula (X – Y) is greater than X?

His school finance plan is very similar.  Only in this case he contends that the state will increase funding by allowing local school districts to spend more by increasing local property taxes.  That is his big idea, giving them “local control,” to increase your property taxes.  If local districts don’t want to increase their property taxes (and most don’t) then obviously the schools don’t need any more money.  More magic, only this time the rabbit is out of the hat so to speak.  We can all see where this is going.

Lastly, he wants to convert our state employee retirement system into a defined contribution plan (think 401K).  The State of Kansas is $8 billion behind in its funding for the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System (KPERS).  To address this issue he wants to stop employees from putting any more money in the system and divert their contributions to a 401K type plan.  How do we make up the $8 billion?  Well, he hasn’t said.  So I guess maybe this is where the magic runs out.  You can’t make it up if you stop contributions.

Perhaps it is just me, but I believe the citizens of Kansas deserve more than smoke and mirror plans for our future.  I think that we as policy makers owe it to our constituents to be honest and offer plans that make sense.  I guess I am just not cut out to be one of the “true believers” who can look you in the eye and say (X – Y) > X!