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OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2017 Founded in 1873 HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager OUR VIEW Warrenton mobile home park offers lessons for everyone O wning your own place to live is one of the main markers of a successful life in America. Even though there are reasons to sometimes question the advantages of owning over renting, we have an inherent belief that ownership delivers financial and lifestyle rewards. It’s one of the flaws in our generally well-liked area that decent housing is in short supply for relatively low-income people, such as Social Security retirees and hospitality industry workers. This makes it especially great news that the housing nonprofit Community And Shelter Assistance Corp. — CASA of Oregon — stepped up to help residents of Warrenton Mobile Home Estates buy their own mobile home park, as described in our story Wednesday. Affiliated with Resident Owned Communities USA, CASA has helped buy 13 parks, including four this year. Most of the Warrenton park’s residents have opted to become shareholders in a housing co-op where expenses and some tasks will be shared by everyone who lives there. This arrangement helps the Warrenton park buck a statewide trend of these facilities being sold and the land converted to more costly housing. Now, residents will be able to keep living in their accustomed place, while controlling their own destiny and perhaps benefiting from increases in value. As the coast attracts more interest from beyond our immedi- ate area, this arrangement stands to protect participants from being priced out of living here. Aside from the obvious benefits for res- idents, this will keep coastal society in general from trending toward becoming a wealthy enclave lacking in economic diversity. This is an idea well worth careful study to see how it can be applied to other mobile home parks, as well as other types of housing dilemmas. Spreading the risks and rewards of prop- erty ownership between multiple residents is an appealing way to make sure coastal people can keep living at the coast. Governor’s orders should concern Oregonians G ov. Kate Brown issued two executive orders last week that she said would reduce greenhouse emissions while supporting Oregon’s economy. The environmental aspects were obvious. The economic ones? Not so much. The Governor’s Office has yet to release any analysis of how her fiats would affect the economy, espe- cially construction costs. That should concern Oregonians. So too should the gover- nor’s decision to bypass the Legislature in revising the state building code. As head of the executive branch, Brown certainly was within her rights to expand purchases of electric vehicles for state use and to require increased energy efficiency when the state builds or remodels its government buildings. The Legislature ulti- mately will decide whether to fund those decisions. But in her 17 pages of executive orders, Brown also demanded changes to building regulations that affect all con- struction in Oregon, including requiring that new buildings be ready for installation of solar panels. That mandate would take effect in October 2020 for residences and October 2022 for commercial buildings. By October 2023, new residences would have to consume no more energy than they generated. By October 2022, new commercial buildings would have to exceed International Green Construction Code requirements. By January 2020, high-efficiency water fixtures would be required in new buildings. By October 2025, new commercial structures would have to safely reuse water for irrigation. Those changes, and others, during the next two to eight years sound good in theory. Brown says Oregonians will save money on utility costs and — with the emphasis on electric vehicles — on fuel. There also are provisions that some requirements could be temporarily delayed if the costs are “significant,” although that term is left undefined. But in practicality, this seems like a classic case of putting the cart — in this case, an electric one — before the horse. Brown provided no evidence that her executive orders involved give-and-take discussions with the construction industry, pri- vate property owners and other Oregonians throughout the state. If state government wants to place unfunded mandates on itself, that’s one thing. But it’s quite different to put those man- dates on the private sector without first understanding the resulting financial and social costs. Running a business, especially a small business, is tough enough in Oregon. Every government mandate increases both the cost of doing business and the uncertainty of doing business. Republican class warfare — the next generation By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times News Service T he other day, Mitch McConnell, the Senate major- ity leader, admitted that he “misspoke” when he declared that his party’s tax plan wouldn’t raise taxes on any middle-class families. But he misspoke when he said “misspoke” — the proper term is “lied.” McConnell was forced into his sort-of-kind-of admission by a new report from the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s own score- keeper, which found that millions of middle-class families would see higher taxes under the Senate Repub- lican proposal. But this wasn’t some kind of narrow, technical mistake on his part. Both the Senate proposal and the similar proposal from House Repub- licans offer huge tax cuts to cor- porations and the wealthy, then try to limit the impacts of these tax cuts on the budget deficit by claw- ing back tax credits and exemptions that mainly benefit the middle class. Of course many in the middle class would see their taxes go up. But focusing on how many would face tax increases gets at only a small part of what’s going on here. Top-down class warfare, cou- pled with false claims to be cutting taxes on the middle class, has been standard GOP operating procedure for a long time. In fact, for policy wonks of a certain age, the current tax debate inspires an overwhelm- ing sense of déjà vu, because many of the tricks Republicans are using come right out of the Bush adminis- tration’s playbook in 2001 and 2003. Tax breaks that phase in or out to make the 10-year budget impact look smaller? Check. Misleading exam- ples and calculations to give the false impression of a tax cut for the mid- dle class? Check. Pretending that tax cuts come free, that they won’t even- tually have to be offset by cuts to popular programs? Check, again. But there are also some new aspects to this latest money grab. This time around, much more clearly than before, the goal seems to be to favor wealth, especially inherited wealth, over work. And buried in the legislation are multiple measures that would make it much harder for the children of the middle and working classes to work their way up. So, about the wealthy: The prime example is the way GOP plans would eliminate or sharply reduce taxes on inherited wealth, which cur- rently apply only to a tiny number of huge estates. Yes, Republicans AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite From left, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn talk to reporters about the Senate’s version of the GOP tax reform bill. are still pretending that this is about helping small family businesses and family farms, but at this point that’s a sick joke: The best estimates suggest that only around 80 — eight-zero — of such businesses and farms pay any estate tax each year. This is about making wealthy heirs even wealthier — full stop. There are other big examples, like a new tax loophole that would ben- efit business owners — but only as long as they don’t actually run their businesses. And there’s more. But let me shift focus instead to what Republicans are trying to do to ordi- nary families. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in. We’re still waiting for detailed analysis of the Senate bill, but the House bill doesn’t just raise taxes on many middle-class families: It selec- tively raises taxes on families with children. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in. Suppose that a child from a work- ing-class family decides, despite lim- ited financial resources, to attend col- lege, probably taking out a loan to help pay tuition. Well, guess what: Under the House bill, that interest would no longer be deductible, sub- stantially raising the cost of college. What if you’re working your way through school and your employer contributes toward your education expenses? The House bill would make that contribution taxable income. What if your parent is a univer- sity employee, and you get reduced tuition as a result? That tuition break becomes taxable income. So would tuition breaks for graduate students who work as teaching or research assistants. So what we’re looking at here are a variety of measures that will close off opportunities for children who weren’t clever enough to choose wealthy parents. Meanwhile, funding for the Chil- dren’s Health Insurance Program, which covers more than 8 million children, expired a month and a half ago — and so far, Republicans have made no serious effort to restore it. This is surely the shape of things to come: If tax cuts pass, and the defi- cit explodes, the GOP will suddenly decide that deficits matter again and will demand cuts in social programs, many of which benefit lower-income children. So this isn’t just ordinary class warfare; it’s class warfare aimed at perpetuating inequality into the next generation. Taken together, the ele- ments of both the House and the Sen- ate bills amount to a more or less systematic attempt to lavish benefits on the children of the ultra-wealthy while making it harder for less fortu- nate young people to achieve upward social mobility. Or to put it differently, the tax legislation Republicans are trying to ram through Congress with inde- cent haste, without hearings or time for any kind of serious study, looks an awful lot like an attempt not sim- ply to reinforce plutocracy, but to entrench a hereditary plutocracy. LETTERS WELCOME Letters should be exclusive to The Daily Astorian. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters. Letters should be fewer than 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. You will be contacted to confirm authorship. All letters are subject to editing for space, grammar and, on occa- sion, factual accuracy and verbal verification of authorship. Only two letters per writer are printed each month. Letters written in response to other letter writers should address the issue at hand and, rather than mentioning the writer by name, should refer to the headline and date the letter was published. 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