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.
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