August 13, 2015
It’s
probably the most specious weapon in the arsenal of “progressive” talking
points.
Leftists
monotonously aver that the for-profit community -- businesses small and large,
entire industries, and the trade associations that represent them --
reflexively favor the free market. To entrepreneurs, executives, and investors,
it is claimed, unfettered capitalism is the natural order, and all lobbying and
electioneering must be focused on cutting taxes, relaxing regulations, and
reducing government expenditures.
The
charge is a convenient tool for rallying activists and motivating voters. But
to anyone with even a cursory familiarity with policy and politics, it’s
preposterous.
Consider
“Utahns for Responsible Transportation Investments,” a newly formed
organization that The Salt Lake Tribune reported is pushing
for a sales-tax hike to funnel additional revenue to the Utah Transit Authority
and “cities and counties for local roads.” Headed by the Salt Lake Chamber’s Lane Beattie and Questar
Corporation honcho Ron Jibson, the group believes that “investing today
will save taxpayer dollars tomorrow.”
Sigh. If
there’s anything American transportation/infrastructure does
not need, it’s more taxpayer subsidies. Smarter spending, competitive
contracting, deregulation, privatization, and reality-based compensation for
transit employees are just a few of the non-revenue reform options. But again
and again, business interests are snookered into endorsing greater
“investment.”
In May,
Michigan voters voted down -- by a ratio of four to one -- a plan
to increase the state’s sales tax, gasoline tax, and auto-registration fees to
raise “additional money for roads and other transportation purposes.” The Small
Business Association of Michigan, Detroit Regional Chamber, and Business
Leaders for Michigan all
backed it. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce didn’t -- prescience, perhaps?
-- but it has endorsed a legislative proposal to nearly double the Wolverine State’s fuel taxes, and index the levies to
inflation. The group’s general counsel and senior vice president for business
advocacy is “confident that leaders in the House and Senate can work together
to … enact a final solution to Michigan’s road funding crisis before Labor
Day.”
Subsidized
stadiums, dodgy bond measures, boosting expenditures on government schools --
it’s tough to argue with supply-side economist Stephen Moore’s conclusion that
“thanks to an astonishing political transformation, many chambers of commerce
on the state and local level” have become “lobbyists for big government.” The
Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken goes further, writing that chambers “are in the
game of socializing their costs and privatizing their profits. Naturally, these
groups … often enthusiastically support statewide income taxes or sales taxes
that will cost the larger population plenty.”
The
all-time champion of business-lobbying stupidity took place in the Nutmeg
State, nearly a quarter-century ago. In 1991, Connecticut faced a huge budget
gap, the result of overspending during the Reagan boom. When fiscal
inevitability struck, a slim majority of Democrats and Republicans decided that
the enactment of a broad-based
income tax was needed. The president of the Connecticut Business and Industry
Association (CBIA) agreed, calling the levy “an honest approach to solving the
state’s problems.”
Since
the income tax’s imposition, Connecticut’s economic performance has been
dismal. Residents are leaving, and late last year the governor’s top budget
bureaucrat admitted
that the state had “entered into a period of permanent fiscal crisis.” Nonetheless,
the CBIA refuses to admit that its advocacy for the tax was asinine.
At the
federal level, the dysfunction is no different. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce favors
a higher federal gasoline tax. And it is lobbying
for renewal of the Export-Import Bank’s lending authority. Another unwanted
legacy of the New Deal, U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) accurately described
the institution as “a small-scale example of a larger and more dangerous
threat: the shrinking of the free-market economy and the rise of a progressive
welfare state -- with its attendant cronyism, public-private partnerships, and
spreading government economic controls.” But the chamber’s a fan of the bank.
It’s demanding reauthorization, based on the dubious notion that doing so would
“foster “America’s competitiveness, job creation and growth.”
Looking
backward, the chamber embraced both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s
“stimulus” packages. (The former died in Congress, the latter became law.) Its
treatment of Ron Paul, a reliable enemy of crony capitalism, was egregious. The
chamber’s congressional scorecard penalized
the former congressman for voting against corporatist legislation. More
recently, the organization has aided establishment-leaning Republicans who
faced primary challenges from tea-party candidates.
The National
Federation of Independent Business and its state affiliates are exceptions.
But generally, the business community is a submissive and unreliable ally in
the campaign against unlimited government. Believe it or not, moonbats,
“corporate power” often takes your side.
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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