| :EVT 2002 - News; |
:Aug 16, 2002; |
:News; |
:19 |
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Chalk and cheese
School vouchers not like subsidizing campaigns
— Clint Bolick is vice president and national director of state chapters for the Institute for Justice (ww.ij.org). He is based in IJ’s Phoenix office.
The politically vanquished Sam Coppersmith now has penned two articles on the supposed inconsistency of supporting school choice while opposing the coerced system of campaign subsidies known as the Arizona Clean Elections Act. Coppersmith must have thought he was onto something clever, but in the process seems to have utterly confused himself, not to mention Tribune readers.
My colleagues and I at the Institute for Justice have defended the constitutionality of school choice while challenging the coerced funding sources of the Clean Elections Act. Those actions are perfectly consistent with the cherished principles embodied in the First Amendment.
Coppersmith is correct only when he says that all of us are forced to pay taxes for things with which we disagree. If government decides to create a school choice program — or a system of campaign subsidies — taxpayers are obligated to go along even if they disagree.
But that is true only if government imposes the burden on all taxpayers. So when the state decides to increase public school funding, we all have to pay.
Likewise, states like Arizona that have broadened the choices available to parents, including private schools, spread the costs broadly among the people.
But that’s not how the drafters of the Clean Elections Act decided to proceed. They wanted a grandiose system of lavish subsidies heaped upon politicians. But they knew the voters (who barely passed the initiative anyway) would never approve it if they had to pay for it. Most taxpayers probably would rather pay for $400 military toilet seats than to give their hard-earned money to a politician.
So instead, the Clean Elections people designed a scheme that other people would have to pay for: Specifically, in the form of special fees imposed on lobbyists for for-profit causes (the chamber of commerce has to pay, but environmentalist groups and unions don’t), and a 10 percent surcharge on civil and criminal fines. Few Arizonans realize that every time they get a parking ticket, they are also making a contribution to candidates not of their choosing. Together, those fees account for 70 percent of the Clean Elections Fund.
Any time government imposes a special tax on a discrete group of people, the courts get suspicious — especially so when the money is paying for speech.
Campaign contributions are political speech, at the core of free-speech protections.
Under the First Amendment, government cannot single out a discrete group of people to fund speech with which they disagree. Whether it’s lawyers’ bar fees or teachers’ union dues being used for lobbying or campaigns, or mushroom growers being assessed for commercial advertising, the courts consistently have struck down compelled speech.
In a free society, the decision about which candidates to support — or whether to contribute to candidates at all — must be a private, voluntary one. Only authoritarian countries (and now Arizona) compel political participation. That’s why the Maricopa County Superior Court struck down the lobbyist fee as a violation of the First Amendment, and the surcharge was struck down by the Court of Appeals. The latter issue is now before the Arizona Supreme Court.
That’s the constitutional argument. Beyond that, the fact is that school choice works, and campaign subsidies don’t.
Unless you happen to like politicians. Any time the government subsidizes something, we get more of it — in this case, more candidates, some of them at the outer political fringe, laughing all the way to the bank to cash their taxpayer subsidy checks.
And at a time of severe state budget crisis, the Clean Elections Act adds to the problem. The voluntary funding source — those $5 tax check-offs popularized by a $600,000 advertising campaign — are a scam, too.
They were sold as a state version of the federal tax check-off, where taxpayers can designate $3 of their tax liability to political parties. In Arizona, by contrast, the taxpayer receives a $5 refund (in essence, a bribe to check the box), and $5 flows to the campaign subsidy fund. That means every time the box is checked, it depletes $10 from the treasury. Candidates who accept subsidies ought to explain why their campaigns are more deserving than other state priorities, such as education.
The Clean Elections Act is supposed to reduce special interest influence in politics, but it doesn’t. Candidates like Janet Napolitano relied on labor unions to collect the contributions necessary to qualify for massive public funding, making them more beholden to nondisclosed contributors than ever. And the Goldwater Institute found recently that legislative voting is no different between those who accept public subsidies and those who run with voluntary funding.
School choice, by contrast, provides meaningful educational opportunities for thousands of children who previously attended failing schools. As demonstrated in Milwaukee and Florida, it creates a competitive incentive for public schools to improve.
It’s a good investment; and happily, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed its constitutionality.
It’s not surprising that school choice is a success while campaign subsidies are a failure, for school choice expands freedom while involuntary subsidies diminish it. It usually works out exactly that way. That’s a lesson that would-be elected officials like Sam Coppersmith would profit from learning.
