It's the same old song

by Tom Campbell, Executive Producer and Moderator, NC SPIN, May 15, 2015.

Don’t you find it interesting the ways ideologues and politicians respond to news happenings? Interesting, but disappointing. We keep hearing the same old song repeated over and over.

Here’s how it goes with Republicans and conservatives:

News headline: The economy is slumping so revenues to government are declining.

Republican response: We need to cut taxes and reduce the size of government to stimulate job creation by the wealthy and corporations.

News headline: The economy is strong and government revenues are surging and producing a surplus.

Republican response: We need to cut taxes and reduce the size of government to further stimulate the economy by the wealthy and corporations.

Democrats and liberals are no better. Here is their response:

News headline: The economy is slumping so revenues to government are declining.

Democratic response: We need to increase spending (taxes) and expand programs to stimulate the economy and help those adversely affected, especially the poor.

News headline: The economy is strong and government revenues are surging and producing a surplus.

Democratic response: We need to increase spending (taxes) and expand programs to help even more people, especially the poor.

See the trend? Doesn’t matter what the issue, the response is pretty much the same. Automatic, predictable and ineffective. I don’t know about you but these songs are getting pretty tired.

Just cutting taxes is no more the solution than just spending more money. We generally cannot either cut our way or spend our way out of problems. Different circumstances dictate solutions designed to meet the occasion and we need leaders who are more concerned about doing what is right for the most of us than just spouting the party platitudes.

We are also tired of hearing the same old song in the way government operates. It would be nice to return to times when there was more open government, where honest discussion and opposing opinions were genuinely debated and considered. That hasn’t been the case in many years.

Back in the 1960s, when I first started following public policy issues the Democrats ran things and had the votes to prevail, but there was more of an attitude of cooperation and differing opinions were considered. Legislative committee meetings could be lengthy and filled conflicting debate. Since then we’ve seen more power shifting to fewer hands; the House Speaker or Senate President Pro Tem virtually dictated the outcome of most issues. At one point not long ago the House Speaker even had “floaters” who could attend and vote in committee to assure the outcome.

More recently we have witnessed decision-making by caucus. We don’t know what goes on in caucus because these meetings certainly aren’t open and members are cautioned not to air differences. All we know is that the caucus comes to a decision and the conclusion is delivered to the appropriate committee. The caucus opinion of the majority party has the most votes always prevails. Little or no debate on issues is encouraged and dissenting voices are quickly silenced.

This is a time when the same old song isn’t good enough. We either need different singers or a different repertoire.