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Of the People, by the Politicians, for the Special Interest Groups
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20707 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
5,452 Words |
| Author
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Barbara Anderson
Barbara Anderson is executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation in Boston. |
The day after President Reagan first announced his plan for "tax simplification," then-IRS Commissioner Roscoe Eggar was speaking at a breakfast in the Boston area. He told his audience that "as of this morning, there is not a hotel room to be had within a fifty-mile radius of Washington, D.C."
The result of this mammoth assault of the ramparts of power was that the president's brief proposal grew into a 671-page book by the time he signed it into law. This book stands as a monument to the public perception that Washington belongs to special interest groups.
There are many proposals to deal with this pervasive perceived problem, ranging from Jerry Brown's flat-rate tax through public financing of campaigns to limiting congressional terms. Common Cause wants to control political action committees (PACs); the National Taxpayers Union wants a constitutional requirement for a federal balanced budget; and every other self-styled "watchdog" organization has its own plan for venting its outrage.
Such initiatives are based on three assumptions:
1.that big money bus politicians,
2.that the linger these politicians are around the more bought they become, and
3.That the U.S Constitution is the only document beyond the reach of special interest lobbying. All these assumptions are probably correct, not only at the federal level but also within some state and city government.
However, Pogo may have been on to something when he said, "We have met the enemy and they are us." We are all, in fact, part of one or more special-interest groups--business, labor, the elderly, education constituents, environmentalists, consumers, even taxpayers. All of us, in one way or another, try to influence state policy to our own advantage. Theoretically, that is democracy in action--by trying to advance our own competing positions, we often prevent any single powerful interest from gaining total control of the political process.
Certainly, citizens' awareness of the power of the special interests' purse in healthy. Once one understands the powerful influence that special-interest agendas exercise on state tax policy, it is easier to understand why so many states and
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