Political Football

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington

When government supplies your food, then your medical care, then housing, that dangerous servant becomes your master. Darrell Kearney, the Iowa GOP’s Finance Director gave a moving albeit brief talk about why we are republicans and what’s at stake in the 2008 election.

I went to Des Moines with a group of Muscatine Republican Women for Iowa’s Republican Women’s Day – our time to spend with our legislators. Nathan (invited but was not expected to and) did not acknowledge our attendance at the Capitol today.

The day started with 30 minutes with our State Auditor David Vaudt, always good for some fiscal insight. He wants to see some simple changes to our state budgeting process.

1) Align revenues with expenses
2) Eliminate reliance on one-time and limited resources for ongoing expenditures
3) incorporate longer range planning into budgeting process
4) Continue to enhance clarity in budgeting process.

Examples he gave to #2 was hundreds of millions of dollars being diverted from infrastructure to the general fund and one time bond proceeds of $67 million used to balance the FY09 budget; we will pay for those FY09 services for decades. This is contrary to good budgeting processes.

He talked about there being a 7% increase in revenue, but 4% of that was due to tax or rate increases, and the fact that in the last 10 years with a split government, there was a decent ratio of monies in and monies out. It took 4 months of democrat controlled executive and legislative branches to seriously break that trend.

Vaudt is a nice guy, I like him. What’s really scary to me is our tax revenues from Tobacco and Gaming are keeping us solvent. (More on how the Roman Empire fell later…)

After our visit to David’s office, we spent some time trying to find our legislators, but everyone appeared to be in caucus which took us all by surprise. We found out why shortly.

We gathered for lunch, including more drop-in visits – one was Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. He too is an eloquent speaker and nice guy.

In the Q&A I asked him what I should tell my out of state friends that pummel me about subsidized Ethanol manufacture and the increased price of related food items. He made the standard statements (about reducing the need for foreign oil) but continued to talk about the evolution of this process to the use of switch grass and/or development of anhydrous ammonia or hydrogen production as a replacement for oil. That won’t end the pummeling, and on the way home I pouted that I just want to TOTALLY eliminate the need for foreign oil. I blame American car manufacturers (after the gas lines of the 70’s) for not moving more dramatically toward alternative fuels back then.

Many of the legislators then started to pop in to say hi, or speak for a bit, and that’s where we started to hear the story of the day.

The fiery debate over “fair share” fees for labor unions is alive again…

Republican lawmakers believe they have spotted language that would allow unions to negotiate for fair share-type fees in an amendment to a bill that some lawmakers say was pitched as noncontroversial.

“It doesn’t use the words ‘fair share,’ but there are two pieces that taken together make fair share a mandatory subject of collective bargaining,” said House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, a Republican from Sioux City. “I’d admire the elegance if I wasn’t so angry.”

read more by taking this LINK

One by one representatives like Tom Sands, Jeff Kaufmann, Carmine Boal, and Kraig Paulsen told us about what was going on – the biggest hand from the women’s group was for Dawn Pettengill; the woman who single handedly saved Right To Work in Iowa in 2007. She dramatically switched parties at the end of the session. I met her at a Kaufmann fundraiser where she talked about that experience and we had a few seconds to renew acquaintance today. She’s got a book in her on that experience.

Earlier in the day most of the conversation was about 2009, Democrats will lay low and try to take a super majority in both houses, and not propose any huge new tax bills before election 2008. But what happened at 4pm yesterday (3/18) and continued today, was unexpected.

More on that tomorrow.

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