Funds in the possession of the government at every level must be treated with the utmost care. After all, these are not moneys freely given into the custody of federal, state and local officials. On the contrary, government coffers are filled, by and large, by money coercively taken from people in the form of many different taxes.
For fiscally responsible policy makers, this burden weighs heavily, as they ask themselves, before every vote taken to spend or commit these dollars, "Is this spending necessary?" or, "Is it right to spend money we have taken by force on this particular spending project?"
A principled conservative policy-maker would look at every spending proposal, and ask, "Could this money be better spent by an individual?"
After that, they might ask, "Is this spending something that should be taking place not at my level of government but perhaps a level of government that is closer to the people?"
But perhaps the trickiest part for policy makers is to avoid the temptation to throw principled fiscal policy out the window as opportunities come along to supplant conservative ideology about the ‘proper role of government’ with some sort of ‘business role’ for government, where suddenly the investing of tax dollars into areas where government doesn’t belong is rationalized or justified because there would be some benefit derived that somehow makes it okay.
A good example of this would be the city that offers big tax credits or exemptions to a tax-generating business, such as a car dealership, to entice them to come to their city. After all, it might make good ‘business sense’ as a big dealership could generate millions of dollars in tax income, so why not offer them a few hundred thousand dollars "back" in tax credits to get them to come to your city? It sounds good on paper, but it flies in that face of the proper role for government, which should not advantage one segment of the private sector over others.
Examples of this can be seen all around the state, where names like "economic development" are used to justify the spending of taxpayer funds on things that government, frankly, should not be doing.
I always try to tie this kind of column to something in the news today, which in this case would be news stories that the California State Assembly, on a vote of 65-1 (Todd Spitzer of Orange County was the lone "no" vote), has generously offered to place the taxpayers of California in the role of providing $250 million in ‘insurance’ for a potential Los Angeles site for a future Olympic Games, due and payable to cover losses if the games lose money.
Seem far fetched? The people of Greece will be paying money literally for generations to make up for all of the red ink losses of the Athens 2004 games. Of course, Greece is a substantially more socialistic country than America. Nevertheless, the point is that it is a very real possibility that, if not well managed, the Olympics can be a big money-loser.
In America, if money is needed to ‘insure’ the games, that is when a group of private investors should be courted, and perhaps offered a financial deal in return for providing ‘coverage’ though an insurance policy taken out with Lloyds of London or some other, private insurance underwriter.
Providing insurance towards the financial success of sporting events is not why we have government. That is not even close to a proper role for the use of coercively taken tax dollars.
Of course, now we have the slippery slope. In order to make sure the taxpayers of California are not on the hook, we now have a vested "state interest" in the success of the games. What does that mean? Should we have a special State of California Olympics Oversight Committee formed, to ensure that all of the Olympics’ various transactions (hiring of vendors, contracts with venues, marketing plans, staff hiring, etcetera) are all AOK with the state, who now needs to ‘protect’ taxpayers? Now there is justification for even more tax dollars to be spent to ensure that we don’t spend more tax dollars? Nutty.
If the City of Chigaco wants to inappropriately commit their taxpayers to covering potential financial losses in order to make a Chicago bid more attractive to the Olympic Organizing Committee, that is between their city government officials and city taxpayers. I would be outraged.
Similarly, I am pretty shocked that in our State Legislature, clearly there are elected officials who call themselves ‘fiscal conservatives’ who support a very broad use of taxpayer moneys — in this case, to insure a massive sporting and entertainment event.
Tsk, tsk. This bill should be rejected in the State Senate. And those legislators who oppose it should have the courage to cast a NO vote when their name is called.
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.