« "And There Was Much Rejoicing.." | Main | Candidate for Quote of the Day »
January 10, 2007
In the Pulse: The Glorious 105th - Immigration reform, cheaper food, and HOPE dollar-drooling mark Jimmy’s ninth term
Vintage Speakers
While most of the attention given the new Congress is deserved—after all, how many Framers, regardless of whether they should have, imagined that the Speaker of the House would one day be named Nancy?—we have our own glorious legislative dawn just up Highway 41. The 105th General Assembly of the State of Tennessee has convened.
First, though, the party caucuses met to choose their respective leaders. The Republicans replaced a couple of posts: Rep. Jason Mumpower captured the House Minority leadership from Bill Dunn, and Sen. Mark Norris became the GOP Senate Caucus Chair instead of Randy McNally, but these turnovers presented but a shadow of the drama and political maneuvering that surrounded longtime Lt. Gov. John Wilder.
A Democratic caucus campaign by its chairman, Sen. Joe Haynes, to replace Wilder as the nominee ultimately failed, so the full Senate votes on a rematch between Wilder and Majority Leader Ron Ramsey. Wilder remains Speaker of the Senate not necessarily by receiving the most votes, but also if no other candidate were to get 17. All eyes are on two senators: Mike Williams of Maynardville, a Republican who supported Wilder last time around; and Jerry Cooper of McMinnville, the recently indicted Democrat whose vocal support for Haynes signaled a lack thereof for Wilder.
The outcome will hit newsstands the same day as this column, so you know by now whether or not John Wilder was able to remain Speaker. Here’s hoping something better happened, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the House, it goes without saying that Jimmy Naifeh will be Speaker for a ninth consecutive term.
Now that we basically know who’ll be in charge, what else is in store for the Legislature in 2007?
Don’t have to live like a refugee
The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) estimates that over 30 bills will be proposed this session that the group considers anti-immigrant. That could cause one to wonder how many will be introduced that seek to solidify or clarify immigrant rights. My guess is that there won’t be many. In our effort to take up federal slack on the complex issues surrounding eager workers who ill-advisedly forego the tangle of DHS paperwork, and the equally eager businesses that lust after the cheap labor, we’ll be wise not to forget that we’re actually talking about people, real human beings, when we bandy about the words “illegal immigration.” This is not to condone lawlessness, but all too often the concern over this, let’s face it, vital economic bloc takes on a bigoted tone, and results in undue hardships being placed on even perfectly authorized guest residents.
All the lottery tickets you can eat (but can you smoke ‘em?)
For ostensibly opposing reasons, conservatives and liberals alike support eliminating the sales tax on groceries. So will it happen? We shall see. We’re told that getting rid of this tax means a $450 million revenue reduction; but with a seemingly recurring budget surplus of late, the hit doesn’t seem to be so hard as that sounds. On top of that, several proponents encourage a gradual stepping down from one of the highest food tax burdens in the nation to zero, so that no single fiscal plan has to absorb it all.
Raising the tax on tobacco products to replace the funds seems like too easy a fix. When enough people finally realize that using tobacco fails the old cost-benefit analysis, and quit on their own, what tax will have to be raised to replace that on cigarettes? (We’ll discuss the potential health care offset another time.) Consider that, proportionally speaking, the households for which the absence of food taxes would actually mean something also are households with smokers. Can you sense the irony in lowering the grocery tax but raising taxes on tobacco? Well-to-do non-smokers definitely win that one. Then again, it’s not an implausible prediction that some with more money on hand due to food tax elimination would simply dump more of it into a different part of the state budget: the education lottery.
How do you spell “BEP?”
Speaking of the lottery surplus, education will be a priority this session as lawmakers struggle to maintain campaign promises and help fund their districts’ school systems. Over $300 million in leftover HOPE money hangs like an apple in Eden, and many legislators are reaching for it with the idea that it can supplement meager funds for K-12. Never mind that the lottery was established to provide for higher education and pre-K.
Others, notably Rep. Tommie Brown of Chattanooga, want to leave the surplus just sitting there. Even if I disagree with an intended use (for example, I can’t go along with former Senator Steve Cohen’s suggestion to lower the scholarship GPA threshold, as it kind of ignores the “scholar” part), the fact is that the money is there, and something could be done with it. Lottery money is “voluntary tax” revenue, so there should be no qualms about going ahead and spending it judiciously.
Watch for fireworks as urban counties such as our own wrangle for more funds, whatever their source, while current rural BEP beneficiaries dig in their heels to keep theirs.
These are going to be a fun few months.
[This column appears in the January 10, 2007 Pulse.]
Government , Pulsations | By joe lance | 09:19 AM