{"id":2372,"date":"2010-03-27T11:41:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T19:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2010-03-29T05:52:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T13:52:55","slug":"bribing-people-with-their-own-money-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/bribing-people-with-their-own-money-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bribing people with their own money (Pt. 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bart Stupak gained recognition–and notoriety–for holding the health care reform bill hostage over his anti-abortion demands.\u00a0 The 11th hour pledge by President Obama in the form of a promised executive order to meet those demands sealed Stupak’s support, and passage of the landmark bill.\u00a0 Stupak’s stance has infuriated folks on both sides<\/a> of the abortion debate.<\/p>\n

The pro-life faction considers an executive order to be a lame bulwark against a law that otherwise allows federal subsidies for abortion, and feels betrayed:<\/p>\n

Michigan for Life took away the endorsement he has enjoyed for 18 years.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The staunch liberals, who generally favor abortion-rights, also feel jacked around:<\/p>\n

“The fact that he was willing to threaten health-care reform for this narrow, pro-life issue just burned me up, and it had meant he had lied to us.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, this post is not about health care or abortion.\u00a0 It’s about how Stupak will win re-election despite all of the animus directed against him from both sides, including the high-profile defections of powerful supporters.<\/p>\n

The fact that Stupak reflects the pro-life, pro-gun, pro-labor sensibilities of his constituents is a reasonable enough basis for his rosy re-election prospects.\u00a0 But there are a lot of worthy people in his district with those policy positions.\u00a0 Stupak’s political invincibility rests on federal bacon he has brought home.<\/p>\n

[Stupak] has brought home millions of dollars in federal projects to the district, said David Haynes, a professor of politics at Northern Michigan University… “Bart has delivered things like road projects and people will remember that.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reflects a remarkably low hurdle for his political strength.\u00a0 His district has shipped between $10 and $15 billion in taxes to Washington over his last term.\u00a0 Getting a few extra million back for some road projects is like a tip.<\/p>\n

The fact is, most taxpayers view taxes that come out of their paychecks as a fixed cost, like a mortgage or a car payment.\u00a0 But they seem to view discretionary government spending in their district as a kind of gift, even though it’s their own money that feeds the pot from which that spending originates.\u00a0 Of course, the skill of their particular congressman in “bringing home the bacon” can make millions of dollars of difference one way or the other, and they credit their congressman accordingly.\u00a0 But they wouldn’t give him or her the same credit for reducing their taxes by one percent, which could easily leave them with the resources to build their own roads and have plenty of money left over.\u00a0 Liberals would complain, “but those people wouldn’t spend their tax savings like that,” as if that were a valid defense for routing those millions via Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The fact is that the politicians sustain a system of everyone paying for everyone else’s roads via the byzantine machinery of Congress as a way of getting credit for something their people could accomplish with far less waste and friction if they were simply left with the resources (and the expectation) to do it themselves.<\/p>\n

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Unsourced attribution to Alexander Fraser Tytler (often misattributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bart Stupak gained recognition–and notoriety–for holding the health care reform bill hostage over his anti-abortion demands.\u00a0 The 11th hour pledge by President Obama in the form of a promised executive order to meet those demands sealed Stupak’s support, and passage of the landmark bill.\u00a0 Stupak’s stance has infuriated folks on both sides of the abortion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invisible-trade-offs","tag-bribing-people-with-their-own-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}