The View from St. Paul

D. J. Tice

D. J. Tice is an editorial page writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. This article is reprinted from the Pioneer Press.

State Budget Will Be Balanced with “Spending Cuts,” No Matter What

Minnesota is in for a stormy and fascinating winter, as a new governor and Legislature struggle to overcome state budget deficits totaling some $4.6 billion over the next 30 months.

The great debate that seems to be shaping up is this: Should the state-can the state possibly-eliminate this historic deficit entirely through spending reductions?

Policymakers will arrive at sensible answers only if they ask sensible questions. Whether this question about “spending reductions” has any sense in it depends altogether upon what one means by “the state.”

If we are, as surely we should be, considering Minnesota as a whole-the private sector along with the public sector, taxpayers along with the government that serves them-then it is meaningless to ask whether the whole deficit should be resolved through spending cuts.

The shortfall will be resolved through “spending cuts,” every last dollar of it, and it makes not the slightest difference (on that question) what government decides.

What I mean is very simple, yet easily overlooked. State government faces a deficit because it is collecting less in taxes than it expected to collect. It is collecting less in taxes because the private state economy is growing less vigorously than expected. In other words, the state economy is producing less wealth-less total income-than projected.

As surely as day is followed by night, a reduction in total income will be followed by an equal reduction in total spending. (For this purpose, savings, too, is best thought of as a form of spending-spending deferred to the future-which also will be lower than expected.)

The state government deficit represents only a fraction of the total spending reduction Minnesotans are experiencing. That’s because state tax collections represent only a fraction of the state economy. Meanwhile, all of the reduction in projected income across the whole state economy must result in spending cuts somewhere.

The only real question facing policymakers is whether government should shoulder its own fraction of the total spending reduction going on across the state. Some argue that government should raise taxes instead. That would mean government’s spending cuts would be smaller-but spending reductions elsewhere would be correspondingly larger.

A case can certainly be made for preserving government programs by forcing still larger private spending cuts. But one argument that can’t be made for this choice is that it would avoid “spending cuts” in any meaningful overall sense. Nor is it plausible to suggest Minnesota’s economy would inherently benefit by preserving government spending.

If a dollar is taxed away from taxpayer Sally to preserve a dollar of government spending, Sally won’t spend that dollar as she otherwise would have-at a local restaurant, say. Waiter Harry in turn will collect a dollar less in tips, a dollar he won’t spend at the grocery store, where cashier Jodie. . . . Well, you get the idea.

The fact that some beneficiary of some state program has through this same decision been spared a cut of one dollar can’t change the overall economic effect.

Now, it needs to be said that this big picture view of things also undermines the too-simple question conservative tax cutters want policymakers to ask-something like, “Should we protect the government budget or the family budget?”

State employee salaries contribute to family budgets. Fee increases and benefit reductions will shrink families’ resources. And the dollars cut from families’ budgets in those ways won’t be spent at Harry’s restaurant or Jodie’s checkout line, either.

The bad news for policymakers is that the sensible question before them is much more difficult than the cartoon issues both liberals and conservatives would prefer to debate. It is the question of where the unavoidable spending cuts Minnesota faces will do the least harm.

Which government programs and services are so productive and essential that cutting spending on them would do more social or economic damage than the private spending cuts that will have to be increased if taxes are raised?

No one can pretend this is an easy question. But it is easy to see that politicians’ inclination will generally be to overestimate the “cost” of government spending cuts and underestimate the “cost” of private spending cuts.

That’s because waiters and cashiers and other taxpayers are scattered and unorganized, and the spending cuts they make aren’t readily visible at the Capitol. By contrast, public employee unions and university administrators and local governments and state program beneficiaries paint lawmakers a vivid picture of their difficulties.

For this reason, we should be thankful for the “no-tax hike” pledge of Governor-elect Tim Pawlenty and others, which is being so widely lamented just now by folks who want to pretend that Minnesota can somehow avoid “spending cuts.”

We may, in the end, get higher taxes-especially indirectly, as through the property tax. But thanks to the no-tax commitments of some top politicians, tax hikes won’t be the first or only option policymakers consider.

Democrat Majority Died from Old, Vietnam-era Wounds

Democrats are having an awful time making peace with Republican victories in the recent election. A few rich and famous revolutionaries, like Bill Moyers and Garrison Keillor, are throwing embarrassing tantrums, proclaiming the fanatic’s eternal faith that everyone who disagrees with him is evil.

Meanwhile, liberals with better manners and more stable brain chemistry are nonetheless genuinely dismayed. They’re perplexed about what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party and the progressive movement.

The answer-however unwelcome-seems rather simple.

The radical counterculture liberalism of the 1960s has finally completed its demolition of the New Deal Democrat majority-a task begun more than three decades ago. We have here one of those historical trends that is impossible to miss once you step back far enough to see long-term pattern.

Go back 70 years, to the last definitive realignment of American politics, in the depths of the Depression in 1932. In the nine presidential elections beginning with that watershed, Democrats won the White House seven times-losing it only to Dwight Eisenhower, the likable war hero of the century. During the same 36 years, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in all but two sessions.

It was an awesome domination of national political life built on a philosophy that won the hearts of ordinary working Americans. That philosophy centered on protecting the rights of the laboring class and restraining big business excesses; establishing a social safety net to prevent destitution among those who could not support themselves; and pursuing a strong, assertive foreign policy to protect American interests and the security of the free world.

This Democratic dynasty’s problems began in 1968, with the election of Republican Richard Nixon (neither a war hero nor especially likable) at the height of the Vietnam War and the ’60s social turmoil.

In the nine presidential cycles since 1968, Republicans have won the White House six times, nearly matching the Democrats’ earlier dominance. Only gradually has the GOP been able to seize control of Congress as well. But its advantage there now begins to look solid.

It’s a striking reversal of historic fortunes that Democrats need to study.

A closer look points to the one issue that is proving deadly for Democrats. In the period since 1968 (discounting the 1976 post-Watergate election), Democrats’ presidential successes came recently-with Bill Clinton in ’92 and ’96. Al Gore also ran very well in 2000, winning the popular vote. Then things fell apart again last year.

What might this reveal? While not ignoring the powerful personal appeal of Clinton, there is a more important common characteristic about the elections from 1992 to 2000, when Democrat presidential candidates did well. Those elections came between the end of the Cold War and Sept. 11, 2001-a period when issues of national security, for the first time in memory, were not preoccupying Americans’ minds.

In the November election-the first since national security came back as a critical concern-Americans turned decisively back toward the GOP and George W. Bush.

Democrats must fearlessly consider the implication of this pattern. Whatever other problems they face, it simply seems that too many ordinary Americans lack confidence that modern liberals will boldly defend the nation and its interests. It’s a long-term problem, born with the anti-Vietnam War movement’s declaration that America was the villain in Southeast Asia and continuing today in suggestions among progressives that America’s enemies have legitimate reasons to hate us. It’s not a problem old-style liberals like Truman or a Kennedy had.

Those who honestly believe America should restrain its use of military might will, of course, have go on expressing those convictions and fighting for those policies. But as a political matter, Democrats may continue to have trouble winning national elections so long as voters have doubts about their willingness to confront the nation’s foes.

There are, of course, a dozen other issues on which Democrats are hobbled by the ’60s mindset, which hasn’t digested a really new idea since the Beatles broke up. The basic malady may be the pseudo-religious, political fundamentalism of many Woodstock-era faithful, which produces (now as decades ago) a breathtaking self-righteousness and a stunning lack of self-awareness.

But conservatives are not as overjoyed these days as liberals are overwrought. Anyhow, they shouldn’t be. One of Democrats’ problems winning elections just now is that liberalism has already delivered on many of its historic promises, while ’60s values are triumphant in the culture, if not in national politics.

The era of big government is not “over”-it is apparently here to stay, with Republicans: in charge. So, it seems, is a looseness about sexual mores and pornography and family ties that would have amazed (and displeased) liberals of the Democrats’ glory days.

Strangely, perhaps, the pacifist, anti-war sentiment that was the heart and soul of the ’60s is the one legacy of that era Democrats need most to discard to win more elections.

One’s “Strange Eventful History” Seems Short and Sweet at 50

I once sat down to write what I was sure would be a sly and entertaining murder mystery. The only part I finished was the title.

As I’ve remained distracted from the composition of this splendid novel for roughly three decades, I’ve decided I might as well publish the title for other purposes.

I was going to call my whodunit “Only the Young Die Young.”

That name appealed to me because it seemed slightly ominous, slightly wistful and slightly silly-which pretty well sums up my total reaction to life. Total reactions are on my mind just now, and maybe it’s only natural.

I turn 50 years old today.

I have been warned to prepare for a great psychological crisis in connection with this milestone. Perhaps that’s what happening. Only the young die young, after all, and to the long list of distinctions it now seems I will never achieve I must add yet another:

I shall not depart this vale of tears in quite the full flower of my youth, leaving kindly people to wonder what astonishing marvels I might have accomplished if only I’d had half a chance.

Truth is, having lived well over half my allotted “three score and ten,” I have more often been pleasantly surprised by life than deeply disappointed. It’s a latent gift, no doubt, of having been raised with what might be charitably called “realistic” Scandinavian expectations.

Let me put it this way: When I see television commercials nowadays promoting prescription drugs for those who suffer something called “generalized anxiety disorder,” my heart leaps with the thought that the lost tribe from which I come has finally been discovered by Science. These are my people.

I burden readers with my crisis at the turning point for the simple reason that I have a forum to do so, while most of Time’s bemused victims do not. I offer the small solace of companionship in mortification to that multitude of fellow veterans of the ’60s youth revolution (who once vowed never to trust anyone over 30!) who have either recently passed the half-century mark or can sense it looming around the next bend.

Chesterton wrote of his own contemporaries’ transporting faith, during their youth, in the simple, glorious fact that they were young. Unfortunately, he added, “This is not a conviction that strengthens with the years.”

One pleasure that does grow with time is the ability to appreciate the astounding truth of well-worn words of wisdom one first hears, with some impatience, early in life. “Please,” “thank you” and “I’m sorry” really are magic words. You really can’t make people like you. This, too, really shall pass.

“All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare, “. . . and each man in his time plays many parts.” I suppose I first met that famous metaphor as a teenager. But it’s after passing through a few roles that you see how profound it is.

Perhaps you too can remember, now, playing Shakespeare’s “whining schoolboy” with “shining morning face.” You may recall a turn as something resembling his “lover”-“sighing like a furnace with a woeful ballad . . .” Most of us have had a lengthy run portraying some version of his “soldier”:

. . . full of strange oaths . . . jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation . . .”

Maybe it’s when one recognizes the perfection of likening reputation to a “bubble” that one passes into the role Shakespeare called “the justice.” Or maybe it’s just when the description fits: “in fair round belly . . . full of wise saws and modern instances.”

That hurts, but not as much as thinking about the only roles that remain to be played.

Life, Shakespeare’s “strange, eventful history,” is surprisingly short, of course. But I’m as much impressed just now with the thought that History in the larger sense is also short. I’ve been entertaining a fancy of picturing human history as a line of people the same delicate age as me, stretching back across time -a line of 50-year-olds, end to end, each one born on the 50th birthday of the person before.

Just two people behind me in this curious timeline stands a formidable frontier woman, born in 1852, before Minnesota was a state. Just four people back stands a ruffled gentleman in a powdered wig, born before America was a country. Merely seven spots behind me is a fellow who lived when Shakespeare himself was still strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage.

The 40th 50-year-old in line saw the first Christmas.

No wonder our lives can seem at once so impossibly full and so impossibly brief. All of humankind’s existence has been like that.

My dear, kind-hearted, tough-minded mother, nearing 80 now, assures me that “Getting old is not for sissies.” She’s still protecting me, I guess, from softheaded expectations.

I have come to believe, meanwhile, that our calling in this world is to try to love life more than we fear death.