The underlying principle that leads Minnesota's GOP to stand firm

Many of the Republicans I talk with are people who want to conduct politics in a reasoned, principled way. They find themselves participating in the current impasse and shutdown of Minnesota government because of their belief in certain principles. The alternatives to shutdown seem to be mostly compromises that would once again simply delay the reckoning that is so apparently coming.

The underlying principle that leads them to stand firm is a deeply held belief that government must be held to be a reasonable fraction of the total economy. Absent such restraint, the system becomes unsustainable in the long run as more and more special interests gain access to other people's money through taxation and government spending.

As the imbalance between private and public sectors grows, it begins to destroy the very economic engines that created the society's wealth in the first place. The Republican leaders I speak with see lessons about overreaching governments not only in histories written long ago, but also in the headlines of our own times. They consider Wisconsin and California (and their economic cousin, Greece) to be symptomatic of systems that promised, when times were good, more than could be delivered when times were not so good. In some part these promises of government services were based on an assumption that has turned out to be unrealistic -- that is to say, unlimited growth in the presence of a dramatic demographic shift.

Many of these same principled leaders are painfully aware of the role played by our byzantine tax codes, codes that have been used by politicians to pick economic winners and losers. They view tax expenditures and similar loopholes to be poorly defensible, but useful, means by which to restrict the government's share of the economic system. They recognize that this was done at the price of losing the moral high ground on fair taxes and free markets.

I have met some of these elected Republican leaders, leaders who are quite ready to correct the unruly tax system that currently lets both parties argue that taxes are unfair. But the current focus on the budget crisis, with its politically expedient finger-pointing, has made their reasoned discussion of tax reform impractical, untimely and unheard.

So we see Republicans having to sacrifice the principles of fair taxes and free markets in favor of the greater need to hold government to a reasonable share of the economy. With time having run out, we find ourselves in gridlock, as the only issue on the table becomes whether to continue the spiral of more taxation and more government intrusion or to remain firm in a principled stand against "government growth as usual."

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Bruce W. Morlan works as a mathematician conducting research into medical practice and policy. He is an elected township supervisor, member of two planning commissions, and a volunteer mediator for the Rice County Dispute Resolution Program. He conducts periodic political salons at a local pub and is a source in MPR's Public Insight Network.

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