Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 23, 1992 TAG: 9203230149
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE F. WILL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A few weeks ago he annoyed West Virginia's Billion Dollar Industry (also known as Robert Byrd, chairman of the Appropriations Committee), and he made a majority of the other senators unhappy. He did this by forcing them to vote on empowering presidents to exercise a line-item veto. They voted that down, of course. They love pork even more than they hate being seen voting to protect their ability to bloat the budget with it. But McCain had another arrow in his quiver.
Last week he shot it, forcing a vote on a measure that would have required a "supermajority" - 60 senators - to pass a tax increase. He lost, of course, 58- 37. But it was a constructive defeat because it was an essentially party-line vote.
On McCain's side, 35 Republicans were joined by two Democrats, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Of the 58 against him, 52 were Democrats. Such votes build a record that sharpens differences between the parties.
McCain's measure would have reversed a perverse supermajority requirement now in place. How many Americans know that under the 1990 budget agreement of which President Bush is so fond, a supermajority of 60 senators is required to pass a tax cut? That's right: It takes 60 votes to cut taxes but only 51 to raise them. McCain would reverse this distribution of burdens.
Seven states have experience with provisions similar to McCain's - and in those states spending and tax revenues per capita rose slower than the national average during the 1980s. McCain argued that his measure would increase the likelihood that any tax increase would be backed by a broad national consensus.
There is nothing novel or undemocratic about supermajority requirements. They are as American as the Constitution, which has 10 of them (for overriding vetoes, ratifying treaties, amending the Constitution, etc.). Such requirements say that some decisions are especially grave and should be made only on the basis of special support.
As Jefferson said, great decisions should not be taken on slender majorities. Because, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, the power to tax is the power to destroy, tax increases are a suitable subject for special majority requirement.
Recently, Oklahoma taxpayers took the law - or lawmaking - into their own hands. They passed by initiative a measure that says any revenue measure that the state legislature passes by less than a three-quarters vote in each house must be submitted to the voters at the next general election. This gives one-quarter, plus one, of the members of either house the power to put revenue-raising measures before the public. That prejudices the measures' chances in two ways. The public is sensibly inclined to vote "no" on any complex subject encountered in the voting booth, and the public is generally inclined to say "no" to tax increases.
But this may be less than the clear victory that Oklahoma's anti-taxation forces suppose. By crippling the ability of the state government to raise revenues, this measure will cripple the ability of the state government to provide money for local governments. They may be driven to rely more on, and increase, local taxes, especially the most hated ones - property taxes.
But, then, such hatred will inhibit moves to increase local taxes to compensate for cuts in state aid. So the net effect of all this may indeed be to put the public sector on a diet.
Given the ferocity of today's only nationwide political passion - taxaphobia - perhaps a supermajority requirement for raising taxes is not only unnecessary, it could be harmful. Arguably, the starvation of the public sector is a clear and present danger.
But it is at least as arguable that a measure like McCain's is necessary because of the power of public employee unions and other special interests, and because of incumbency-protection spending by legislatures not operating under term limits. (There are such limits in Oklahoma.)
John Randolph (1773-1833) of Charlotte County, Va., was witty, caustic, dyspeptic and intermittently insane, but he also was a congressman and a senator who knew whereof he spoke when he warned against "the most delicious of privileges," that of spending other people's money. That deliciousness, combined with the incumbents unsleeping attempts to buy votes, is why legislatures have an inherent bent toward increasing taxation.
When term limits are imposed on Congress and all state legislatures, there will be a chance that revenues will be spent more rationally than now - more sensibly than as lubrication for the incumbency-protection machine. Until then, McCain's measure is a needed inhibition. Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB