Editorial

"Taxes: The Low Road to Big Government", by Representative Vic Kohring, February 15, 2002

Comedian Johnny Carson used to quip, "If you buy the premise, you'll buy the bit." For the last quarter century, the legislature has spent far more than it has brought in. The "premise" is we've cut to the bone and can't cut any further. The "bit," as proposed by First Comedian Tony Knowles, is that we must have new taxes to make up the difference.

Well, I don't buy the "premise." We've been told by Knowles, by liberal newspapers, by the tax and spend crowd in Juneau, that any further cutting of the budget would rob us of "vital" programs. To them, it's a budgetary crisis of the highest order. What we really have is a spending crisis caused by politicians eager to spend other peoples' money to appease special interests. This has been going on now for 24 years since oil money started flowing. Now that the oil dollars are shrinking, liberals must find new ways to take our money and spend it on their beloved, but wasteful, programs.

The "bit" then is to recognize why we're here in Juneau in the first place. Are we here to create program after program, each eating up millions of tax dollars, to somehow "help" the people of Alaska? Or, are we here to see to it that Alaskans are given a limited and efficient government that is primarily designed to protect our basic rights? If we identify with our Founders who gave us a limited form of republic, then the solution to this spending crisis is obvious.

We must have the courage to resist the pressures of special interests and cut government. Where? To begin with, we could eliminate the Department of Administration to permit remaining departments to conduct their own internal affairs as they used to do. We could combine other alphabet agencies, including the Department of Environmental Conversation with Natural Resources, and eliminate several hundred ultra high-paying, unnecessary government jobs, a thousand of which exceed $ 130,000.00 a year. Through attrition and hiring freezes, we could cut a big chunk of the 22,000 plus government workforce. We could consolidate smaller school districts and trim expensive administrative positions. We could eliminate Municipal Assistance and cash subsidies for energy. We could sell
government-owned land and place it in private, wealth-producing hands. We could move the capital into the state-owned Atwood Building in Anchorage and save millions of dollars in transportation expenses alone. We could eliminate dozens of social programs that are not constitutional, such as tax dollars that go to public radio and television. Does anyone truly believe we don't have enough radio and TV stations in Alaska? We could close money-losing rural campuses of the University of Alaska and encourage "distance ed" courses which could be taken by anyone with a computer.

There are ample places to cut. All it will take is the will to do it and an understanding of why it's necessary. It's necessary because we want to live in a free state where an individual is permitted to rise as high as his or her talents will allow. It's impossible if government calls the shots because it believes, sometimes with amazing arrogance, that only they can provide for the welfare of people.

We are at a crossroads in history. We can either take the tax-and-spend low road to big government and depravity, or we can take the high road by making major cuts this year, and in the next four to eight years, bringing back our pride and joy of living in Alaska.

Alaskans by a wide margin have told me they are for cutting government. I intend to listen by voting against new taxes and for big cuts. I encourage the rest of the legislature to do likewise. If you check the premise, you'll find a whole new political world out there ready for the individual to be free and prosperous. Then I'll buy that bit.
 

Vic Kohring is a 4th term Republican who was first elected to the Alaska Legislature in 1994. He is Chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

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