Categories
politics State

Scott Howell for US Senate

When I wrote a better to the editor in support of Dan Liljenquist during the GOP primary earlier this year one of the comments that was made in response to my letter was that once Hatch won the primary all the Liljenquist supporters who were so opposed to Hatch would turn around and support Hatch in the general election. I knew then that was not true – some of those supporting Liljenquist were supporting him because they could not support Hatch and follow their conscience at the same time.

Once Hatch won the primary I found myself needing to examine the democratic candidate for Senate to see if I could cast my vote for him. I have been learning what I could about Scott Howell over the last few months and while there were some things that I liked in what I saw I was not certain that I could cast my vote for him.

After looking, listening, and learning what I could I reached out to Scott to ask a few final questions to determine if I could cast my vote for him or whether I would be forced to vote “none of the above.” The goal of my questions was to try getting a picture of his political view independent of party affiliation. To that end, I found my answer in his response to my question of who he would support for Senate Majority Leader. The first words out of his mouth were, “Harry Reid has to go.”

In and of itself that line would not earn my vote (although I completely agree with it) but as we talked, I saw in Scott a man who understands that we need to change the leadership in our government to make the changes that our nation needs. To put it the way Mitt Romney would, we need to fire the management that got us into this mess.

In contrast, I have no doubt that if I asked that question of Orrin Hatch he would look at me as if I had asked if water was wet and then tell me that Mitch McConnell would be his choice for Senate Majority Leader – how could Hatch possibly argue that seniority is critical and argue for new leadership? Hatch has been busy telling Utah that it is our time to lead. That is just a reference to his claims that he will be the next chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Today Nate Silver puts the odds of the GOP retaking the Senate at 13% which means that Hatch has about a 7% chance of chairing the finance committee.

Mr. Howell’s recognition of the need for new leadership coupled with the virtual guaranteed that Senator Hatch will be unable to deliver on the centerpiece of his campaign made this choice easier than I expected it to be. Right now the best choice Utah has for US Senate is Scott Howell. I still think the best candidate we had for the position this year was Dan Liljenquist but we still have an option to upgrade from our current senator with someone who knows that its time for a change.

As for the future, the fact is that I trust the promise Scott made to me that he will serve no more than two terms more than I trust Orrin’s promise that this is absolutely positively his last term (unless he still has a pulse in 2018) and I think the odds of getting a good candidate other than Scott are better with an incumbent Democrat than with an incumbent Republican (that’s true even if Orrin does keep his promise not to run again).

Join me in voting for Scott Howell for Senate because it is Utah’s time to lead and the best way to lead is still to send someone new who has not been a longtime part of the problem.

Categories
politics State

Endorsing Dan Liljenquist

Dan Liljenquist for U.S. Senate
Photo from Dan Liljenquist

There is a general agreement that our government needs a course correction but there are a variety of visions about what changes need to be made and who is best suited to make those changes. Our senate race in Utah is a race between a vision of changing direction or keeping our current seniority and its attendant benefits. This is where we need to consider what is truly best for the country. The value of seniority is that it lends increased status and bargaining power to dole out favors to other lawmakers in exchange for votes on key legislation or to dole out favors to constituents regardless of whether those favors are a good idea for more than those getting the handout. This is precisely what is wrong with Washington. The compromise that comes with votes traded for favors is what brings us $16 Trillion of debt. This comes because of omnibus bills where favors have been traded so that these massive bills contain pet clauses either funding projects or carving out exceptions in revenue streams for favored groups. There is a better approach to compromise.

Rather than doling out favors and producing massive bills stuffed with perks that curry specific votes but are not generally desirable it is possible to compromise by removing provisions that do not garner sufficient support and producing smaller, more limited bills that accomplish less, cost much less, and only encompasses those aims which have been agreed upon by the legislators.

Dan Liljenquist is running for US Senate in Utah. He likes to say that “reality is not negotiable” and yet, while tackling some of the most challenging problems our state faced, he was able to secure almost unanimous (and in many cases completely unanimous) support for his important bills. Dan knows how to work with people and secure support on both sides of the aisle without doling out favors to other legislators.

I have had the opportunity as a constituent of Dan’s to sit in town hall meetings as Dan has patiently addressed the concerns of citizens related to the reforms he was proposing to save the state from fiscal ruin. I have seen Dan patiently address the concerns expressed about his reforms without talking down to people or resorting to demagoguery on the issues.

This stands in stark contrast to Orrin Hatch who has a penchant for trying to fund pet projects as well as talking down to people.

Dan is the man we need in Washington, D.C right now. We would be better off as a state and as a nation if we sent Orrin out to focus on his music career.

Categories
National politics State

Perspective on Palin Endorsing Hatch

I was a little surprised at the news that Sarah Palin had endorsed Orrin Hatch. It’s not that I had expected her to endorse Dan Liljenquist, just that I would not have expected her to see an entrenched, entitled incumbent as the type of person who could fix what’s wrong in Washington. As I thought about it however I realized that there were a few things that might show her endorsement to be a very hollow one to begin with. First and foremost being that she probably knows absolutely nothing about Dan Liljenquist. In other words her endorsement of “Mr. Balanced Budget” is probably as meaningful as Mitt Romney’s endorsement which came back before Senator Hatch even had a challenger. Here are a few key things to consider about this endorsement and what it shows about this race.

Palin endorsed Hatch because he asked for her endorsement (see here). I strongly suspect that Dan Liljenquist never did. What is really happening with this race is that the reality behind it is quite different than the way it is being painted. Hatch and the GOP establishment players are painting this and every other challenge to an incumbent as a tea-party extremist challenge to the status quo. I will not make any attempt to argue how true that is for the various races around the country but let me illustrate the differences between how this race is framed versus what is actually happening.

Categories
National politics State

We Need a New Generation in Washington

Investors Business Daily has a pro-Hatch propaganda piece up that deserves a few tweaks.

First, the headline says that republicans must gain control of Congress for the economy to recover. Do we really need to remind everyone that Republicans had almost uninterrupted control of Congress from 1995 to 2007. Had Republicans retained control of Congress beyond 2007 does anyone really believe the economy would not still have gone into the great recession?

Second, IBD claims that re-electing Orrin Hatch is crucial if Republicans regain control because “Orrin Hatch will be the first genuine free-market conservative to {become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee}.” Yes, the same Orrin Hatch who cosponsored PIPA until it was politically untenable and wanted to blow up the computers of anyone with pirated software while his own website was powered by an unlicensed copy of software is now “a genuine free-market conservative.” The author, Ernest Christian, claims that all the prior chairmen of the committee whom he had worked with were either liberals or moderates. I’ll take him at his word on that but his description of moderates as “too often … unwilling to make a clear-cut choice between the free-market principles of conservatives and the big-government desires of liberals” is perfectly descriptive of Hatch. The fact that Mr. Christian has been working with every SFC chair since 1970 shows what is really going on here – it’s one old political dog going to bat for another.

For those who want to see the economy truly recover there is only one answer – we need a new generation of conservatives in Washington and we need enough of them there to change the way the rest of the Republicans act in office. As soon as we say “new generation” you know that Orrin Hatch will never fit that bill – he’s as entrenched an incumbent as you’ll ever find.

Categories
State

Taxes: Supply vs Demand

The bulk of the discussion at the legislative town hall meeting last week was focused on fiscal issues of one kind or another. One thing that was briefly touched on was the potential return of sales tax on unprepared food. I have always been a fan of not having that tax, because of its supposedly regressive nature and because unprepared food is generally what I spend my money on, and I see no reason to volunteer for higher taxes on it. A couple of statements in that brief discussion got my brain thinking about some different aspects of tax policy.

One statement that someone made was that when the tax on unprepared food was eliminated the stores simply raised their prices accordingly so that the savings went into their pockets rather than taxpayers. That didn’t strike me as accurate, but even if it was accurate it is no excuse to reinstate the tax – the stores would let consumers absorb the taxes on the now higher prices rather than lower the price to accommodate the tax.

Sen. Liljenquist mentioned that people don’t tend to buy luxury items in down economies. When combined with the fact that our expectations fo government tend to increase in down economies I saw why governments tend to grow endlessly – there is generally an inverse relationship between our demand for government services and our ability to pay for them. When times are tough we demand more and politicians do their best to oblige us. When times are good we tend to expand government in areas that were not previously considered crucial by eating into any taxes that exceed our recession-limited budgets. When times become lean again the once-discretionary programs are viewed as essential and demand greater sacrifice from citizens to maintain the programs that would have been considered outrageous in the previous downturn.

From this perspective it makes more sense to favor regressive or at least “fair” tax schemes where those with the least ability to pay also have a vested interest in the tax rates so that they are less likely to get extravagant when times are generally better and so that the tax revenue is generally more stable. It is simply foolish to base our most essential services on revenue sources that are unavailable when the services are crucial.

I’m not trying to argue that luxury goods should be tax-exempt, but if they form the basis of our tax revenue for essential services we will always be in for gut-wrenching decisions whenever their is a dip in our economic outlook.

Categories
Local State

A Current Example of Being a Good Legislator

Last night I attended a town hall meeting held jointly by my state senator, Sen. Dan Liljenquist; my state representative, Rep. Becky Edwards; and the neighboring district representative in Bountiful, Rep. Sheryl Allen. I came away from that meeting with a number of impressions that I will be sharing in the coming days, but the one I wanted to share first was what a good example Sen. Liljenquist was of a legislator as a communicator, specifically in communicating with his constituents on an important issue.

Almost as soon as the meeting was opened up for comments and questions from those in attendance it became very clear that a majority of the people there were public employees who were not very thrilled with the work that Sen. Liljenquist has been doing to change the pension program for state employees. They expressed their disappointment with the directions he was going and their concerns with the future ramifications of the changes the he is advocating.

He listened calmly over and over but as he spoke it was very evident that he had put a major investment of time and energy to arrive at the best available solution. He politely but decisively explained why the changes were necessary and what he was doing to protect current employees and the fiscal future of the state.

I don’t know if many people at the meeting were swayed as he spoke, but I very much respected how he tackled this difficult issue head on and did not bend to the myopic perspective of some vocal constituents by choosing the irresponsible option of punting the decision to the future.

Categories
State technology

Utah Waste Buster

File this under "technology experiments by public officials" but it seemed worth linking to Utah Waste Buster
if for no other reason than the fact that my senator, Dan Liljenquist, is one of those who is behind this blog. While there are those who complain that this is a waste of money and time (not sure about that since blogger blogs like this are free) I figure that it is worth exploring ways to increase the flow of information between officials and constituents. I’ve added it to my sidebar for now to encourage people to visit and give this a chance of making a difference.

Time will tell if anything truly useful emerges, but I’m always happy to see efforts being made.