As an elected Budget Committee member in my central New Hampshire hamlet, I have often been accused of having an agenda. To my critics, I say:
Yup, you’re right!
Certainly, as a Conservative, I do have a Right philosophy that frames my outlook when spending other peoples’ money. My agenda is simple:
Why should Government’s income grow faster than an average family’s?
I got tired of opening up that twice yearly delivered envelope that told me "Your town is about to get a raise from your money at twice to four times the raise that YOU got (you chump)!". Thus, when I saw this news on NH SB2 and what it meant, I went "YES!"
For Immediate Release:
July 5, 2011
Contact: 603-271-3665House Leaders Comment on New Law to Allow Tax, Spending Caps
CONCORD – House Speaker William O’Brien (R-Mont Vernon) and Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt (R-Salem) today offered the following statements in response to the Governor signing Senate Bill 2, allowing local tax and spending caps.
House Speaker William O’Brien
“SB 2 gives cities and towns the tools to allow voters to rein in excessive spending. While we are working to ensure that we are keeping our limited government and low tax environment strong at the state level, this new law lets our communities do the same. This is a victory for keeping local property taxes low and demanding accountability from our elected officials.”
Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt
“First and foremost this shows that the voices of citizens in towns like Manchester, Laconia, Franklin, Dover and Nashua are not squelched. This is a victory for local control and the taxpayers.”
Tax Caps. Spending Caps. At the Local level. This is huge.
Too often I have seen people, even in my own town, run and campaign as "Conservatives" (like Tom Pauken writes about in his book) just to turn around and vote for just about spending item going (and arguing ad absurdeum that every dollar spent, (i.e., even for his wife the Librarian’s budget), is absolutely necessary and that utter destruction is imminent without it.
While…
…Progressives do not trust individuals to make their own decisions ("life is too complicated…let us make the decisions for you and don’t worry your little heads about, oh, this $14 Trillion debt we built up doing so"), it is politicians that have actually acted, like the ones above, in such a way that the citizenry cannot trust them. The natural reaction is that politicians have no one to blame except for themselves (and those that enable them) for the loss of trust in financial matters. Taxpayers can be pushed, but only so far; tax and spending caps are a natural result of that lack of trust.
This is a tool that the voters, that the taxpayers, can use to stop those politicians from wantonly spending more and more of other peoples’ money. Of course, they do not see it that way; they either see it as their mandate to "improve" their community (like the effort to spend millions in my town to develop more ballfields even as school rolls are decreasing along with academic scores) or simply continue to conflate and confuse the dividing line between legitimate expenditures for a limited government and that of crowding out individual acts of charity and spend ever increasing amounts of taxpayer monies for both.
Constraints can be a good thing – and be good that it forces the managers of the public treasury to actually think things through and be forced to being to come up with scenarios that could be less costly and more effective that might not have been researched if presented with a full and never ending coffer.
Thus, I have a feeling that a lot of Conservatives IN NH, will see this bill, now established law, and put it to good use in their local communities. After all, there’s a reason why politicians have ratings < lawyers and used car salesmen…
