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The 1990 Elections: A Clear Message, Unclear Results
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19077 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1991 |
3,478 Words |
| Author
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Everett Carll Ladd
Everett Carll Ladd is director of the Roper Center in
Storrs, Connecticut. |
The 1990 campaign and its ballot conclusions on November 6 provided dramatic evidence of voter dissatisfaction and, what's more, made clear its source. At the same time, they reminded us again that the end product of our contemporary parties and elections system is a persisting pattern of "split-level," disconnected results.
The election was dominated by a single issue or set of concerns--the public's growing sense that government taxes too much and spends unwisely. This judgment, in effect, renewed the tax revolt of the late 1970s, which had culminated in Ronald Reagan's election. The protest waned in the 1980s but rose again at decade's end in response to a surge of tax hikes at the state and local levels and to economic unease accompanying the current slowdown. The final, albeit confusing, spur came from the drawn-out budget negotiations between President Bush and the Congress, which ultimately raised a number of federal taxes.
Tax And Spending Angst
The U.S. public now charges government with poor performance in terms of rendering fair value. For example, the Roper Center for Public Opinion research gives its respondents a list of different things most people buy and asks: "Thinking of what you get for what you pay...tell me whether in most instances you get excellent value for the dollar, or good value, or only fair value for the dollar, or poor value." In its latest asking (April 1988), Roper found 59 percent saying they got excellent or good return for what they spent for mail service, 46 percent excellent or good value for their health insurance spending, 33 percent for automobile insurance. The two items that ranked lowest were auto repair services (25 percent), and at the very bottom, federal income taxes, where just 22 percent said they got excellent or good value for what they paid.
Other queries get the same basic response. The ABC News/Washington Post poll of May 1990 asked: "Out of every dollar the federal government collects in taxes, how many cents do you think are wasted? "The average response was $.46. For nearly four decades, surveys have asked whether "people in government waste a lot of money we pay in taxes, waste some of it, or don't waste very much of it?" In the 1950s and early 1960s, around 45 percent said a lot is wasted. The proportion rose markedly over the 1960s and 1970s, to the 70 percent to 80 percent range, where it has stayed. This clear sense of poor value rendered underlay the 1990 tax protest.
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