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Progressive Victories
July 2003
From the standpoint of Vermont’s left wing Progressive Party, the 2003 session ought to have been a modest victory. But that’s not the way they saw it.
In a June 10 news conference the Progs expressed dismay that the legislature had not enacted the principal Prog issue, instant runoff voting. They also lamented the failure to index the higher minimum wage to some cost of living index, and reliance on an increased sales tax to fund property tax relief. The Progs were all for relief but wanted it to come from higher income taxes.
But surely this is describing the glass half empty. For a party dedicated to bigger government, the redistribution of wealth, more state control of business, more power for labor unions, and less economic freedom, the glass was surely more than half full.
The legislature balanced the state budget, but at the highest level in history. Certainly the cause of limited government got short shrift in Montpelier this year. The debate as usual centered on how much more the state could squeeze out of its taxpayers to support its expanded programs. The legislature responded to the dairy crisis by authorizing $20 million in government loans and $1.5 million in taxpayer subsidies, to make sure that debt-strapped farmers keep on producing too much milk at too low a price.
The legislature took another big step toward One Big School System by amending Act 60 to make all funding state, not local. As Gov. Dean’s former Finance and Management Commissioner Tom Pelham (I-Calais) has convincingly shown, the property tax relief promised by the bill will have vanished in just two years.
The measure also failed to include any effective form of cost containment, assuring that the taxpayers will go on feeding the public school monster at nearly three times the rate of inflation. The government school lobby – led by the teachers union and the school boards association - won another victory when the legislature refused to consider any of the six bills to expand parental choice in education.
The legislature enacted a so-called jobs bill to hand out more government loans to companies that, but for Vermont’s high taxes, regulations, and mandates, could prosper on their own. The bill to increase jobs also featured more labor price fixing, a 12 percent increase in the minimum wage over two years. This is somehow supposed to aid lower income workers. What it actually does, as dozens of studies have shown, is make people with marginal job skills unemployable. Another nice gift from liberals to the poor people whose cause they profess to champion.
The legislature took the first step toward creating a “Vermont renewable power supply acquisition authority”. This new entity would use the state’s credit to buy the power dams on the Connecticut River from their bankrupt private owner. A renewable energy corporate welfare scheme was fortunately shorn of its key provision – mandatory utility purchase of high priced “green” power portfolios – but the bill did bestow $716,000 of taxpayer dollars on lucky customers who want to buy expensive renewable energy systems but don’t want to shell out the market price.
The Fletcher Allen Hospital cost overrun scandal prompted the legislature to strengthen state control over operations of hospitals and “allocation of health care resources.” This is just one more step toward a totally government-run health care system. It ignores the promising shift toward consumer-driven health care all over the country, and affirms the pernicious idea that more government control is the solution to every problem.
Finally, Senate liberals stonewalled a strong House effort to reform Vermont’s costly and job-killing environmental permit system. Gov. Douglas called this his only “significant disappointment” of the session. This issue is still very much alive, however.
So a reasonable person might ask, “Why are the Progs weeping?” They didn’t get their instant runoff voting bill and higher income tax rates, but from the standpoint of advanced liberalism, things moved steadily forward with bipartisan support: higher taxes, more spending, more state control, more government loans, more labor price fixing, steps toward putting the state into the power business, and no permit reform or school choice.
Cheer up, Progs. It’s Vermonters who believe in lower taxes, limited government, and economic opportunity who ought to be weeping.
