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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, December 3, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Office Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW OTHER VIEWS New life in the center philosophy that people of different ver the past few decades, party parties can rally around. loyalty has been the defining That’s in the realm of ideas. In the feature of national politics. realm of organization there’s also a Especially in the House but even in flurry of activity. David Burstein’s the Senate, members deferred to their group, Run for America, is recruiting a party leaders. Congress as a whole new generation of political candidates. deferred to the presidency. Members The most active centrist of the president’s own party acted as organization, No Labels, began six David his foot soldiers. Members of the other Brooks years ago in opposition to polarized, party acted as his opposition. cutthroat politics. The problem with Comment But Donald Trump’s victory the group back then was that there smashes all that. He is hostile to the was no future to a political movement Republican establishment. His proposals cut whose first name is “No.” You have to be for across orthodox partisan lines. something. As Bill Kristol told me, the coming But under the leadership of its undeterrable Congress may not look like the recent co-founder, Nancy Jacobson, No Labels has Congresses, when party-line voting was evolved. It created a package of reform ideas the rule. A vote on an to make Congress and the infrastructure bill may look executive branch work very different from a vote together. It created an active on health care or education congressional caucus, called or foreign policy. This the Problem Solvers Caucus, may be a Congress with which now has 80 members, many caucuses — floating divided roughly evenly coalitions rather than just between both parties. follow-the-leader obedience. It has been building Meanwhile, as grass-roots activities, which Christopher DeMuth wrote recently in The have so far engaged one million people. It Wall Street Journal, committee chairmen created a “super PAC” so that members of may reassert authority against the executive Congress who vote as centrists can get some branch. Trump’s authoritarian style represents political protection. It recently published a an assault on the traditional separation of policy playbook with 60 proposals to create powers. He may end up energizing all those jobs, reform the tax code, balance the budget constitutional forms and practices he stands and secure entitlement programs. against. Going forward, moderates face four big What’s about to happen in Washington challenges. First, deepen a positive national may be a little like the end of the Cold War — vision that is not merely a positioning bipolarity gives way to multipolarity. A system between left and right. Second, elevate a dominated by two party-line powers gives new generation of political leaders so the way to a system with a lot of different power movement is not just a retread of retired centers. Instead of just R’s and D’s, there will establishment types. be a Trump-dominated populist nationalism, Third, build a mass movement of actual a more libertarian Freedom Caucus, a Bernie voters, not just financiers and think-tank Sanders/Elizabeth Warren progressive caucus, johnnies. Fourth, have the courage to stand a Chuck Schumer/Nancy Pelosi Democratic together as a swing legislative caucus, when old guard. the pressure from the party leaderships The most important caucus formation will becomes intense. be in the ideological center. There’s a lot of It’s an uphill climb, but this is a fertile room between the alt-right and the alt-left, moment. The Trump/Sanders era is going to between Trumpian authoritarianism and create new opposition blocs, filled with people Sanders socialism. who never thought they would be working Until now, people in that space have together. been slow to create donor networks, slow to Moreover, the future of this country is not form think tanks, slow to build coalitions of going to be found in protecting jobs that are moderate legislators. But suddenly there’s a long gone or in catering to the fears of aging flurry of activity between the extremes. whites. There is a raging need for a movement For example, Bill Kristol and Bill Galston that embraces economic dynamism, global have worked in the White Houses of different engagement and social support — that is parties and had voted for the opposite part Milton Friedman on economic policy, presidential candidates in every election Ronald Reagan on foreign policy and Franklin for four decades. But Donald Trump has Roosevelt on welfare policy. reminded them how much they agree on the The new center will probably start as a fundamentals. legislative caucus with members of both The two Bills have now issued a joint parties. Where it goes from there is anybody’s statement calling for “a New Center.” It’s a guess. defense of the basic institutions and practices ■ of our constitutional order, which now seem David Brooks became a New York Times under assault. It’s an attempt to learn from Op-Ed columnist in 2003. He is currently a the election results and craft a governing commentator on PBS. O Anna Reed /Statesman-Journal via AP Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown speaks about her proposed 2017-2019 budget at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem on Thursday. The hole in Brown’s budget There is a gaping hole in Gov. being discussed would invite three Kate Brown’s proposed budget, constituencies to participate in a released last Thursday. Brown’s solution: public sector employers, financial road map for Oregon has PERS members and Oregon nothing to say about the Public taxpayers. It is a realistic coalition of Employees Retirement System shared sacrifice. (PERS) and its burgeoning costs to The greatest political advances local governments in history have occurred when a and school districts. A financial To propose a leader goes against his or her native financial plan for plan for values to break new Oregon and omit Oregon cannot ground. President PERS is a bit like Richard Nixon, the offering a battle omit PERS. arch anti-Communist, strategy and leaving opened diplomacy out ammunition costs. In a nutshell, the PERS challenge with what was then called Red China. President Lyndon Johnson, a is about an unfunded actuarial Southerner, passed landmark Civil liability of more than $20 billion. Rights legislation. To close that gap, school districts For there to be a breakthrough and local governments will face and a remedy on PERS, a similar act extraordinary budget strains. For some school districts, the new PERS of courage must come from Oregon payroll burden will mean dismissing Democratic leaders, because they teachers in order to pay the are most beholden to the public retirement liability of those retired employees unions. from the profession. Gov. John Kitzhaber did that in In Umatilla County, for example, 2013. Kitzhaber proposed PERS reforms, which the Legislature Gov. Brown’s budget calls for enacted. Elements of that package closing the state crime lab in were subsequently thrown out by the Pendleton, costing local jobs and Oregon Supreme Court. detrimentally affecting the local Gov. Kate Brown seems to lack justice system. It would hold the line the courage to take up that fight and for BMCC and local school district win new ground. Leadership on — which is a feat — but it still PERS must come from someone or leaves them well below the funding some group in the statehouse. To levels where they need to be. Once more Gov. Brown has failed ask local governments and school districts to strip services because us. Fortunately there are legislators of a flawed pension system is who are willing to think about solutions that will pass constitutional unacceptable, yet it is the current muster. predicament that looks to only get The proposal most actively worse in the future. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of publisher Kathryn Brown, managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, and opinion page editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. Going forward, moderates face four big challenges. OTHER VIEWS Push politics aside — it’s time to stand up for the public good Portland Tribune G ov. Kate Brown, whose tenure was extended by two years in the election, must convene talks now among the key parties: unions, the business associations and leaders of both parties to address the shortfall legislators will face when they convene in January, and also work toward a more permanent solution. Post-election days are filled with second guessing. If Bud Pierce hadn’t stumbled over a question at the Portland City Club, would he have come closer to unseating Gov. Kate Brown? If Chris Telfer hadn’t run as an Independent, would Republican Jeff Gudman, not Democrat Tobias Read, be our next treasurer? Here’s the one that haunts us: What if a political contest hadn’t happened at all? Let’s imagine for a moment that all the emotion, energy and money — $44 million and still counting — that went into campaigns for and against Measure 97, instead, had been spent in a different way. What if public employee unions that so passionately supported Measure 97 and business groups that so effectively opposed it had, instead, done the harder work? What if rather than distorting each others’ positions, they collaborated on an equitable revenue and spending plan? And instead of questioning each others’ motives, what if they had instead joined forces to educate Oregon voters to the wisdom of their proposal? Is it possible that Oregonians could have broken the decades- long stalemate over how to adequately fund state government? We think so. But instead, Oregon is back where it started. The most urgent problem is the $1.4 billion state budget shortfall for the 2017-19 biennium. The longer-range challenge requires identifying ways to fund government services — particularly education — at a level that actually allows for improvement, not just an unsatisfactory status quo. Throughout this divisive campaign, we have been clear we agree with Measure 97 supporters’ argument that Oregon needs to change its tax system and increase state revenue. But we have argued just as loudly that Measure 97 was a poorly designed proposal that overreached the revenue needs. It was an inequitable tax, based not on sound policy but on favorable polling showing support for the fairy tale that when businesses are taxed they will magically shelter their customers from the expense. During the campaign, supporters of Measure 97 essentially argued that everything had been tried and their 2.5 percent gross-receipts tax was the only answer. With Measure 97 off the table, however, they must face the hard reality that other solutions must be developed. Likewise, the business groups opposed to Measure 97 need to understand this was a wake-up call. Rather than take a victory lap, they need to come to the table and be prepared to compromise. The idea that there are no other options is both incorrect and unacceptable. Here are some possibilities: • Crafting a much smaller, fairer and intelligently designed gross receipts tax, as proposed by state Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton. • Adjusting the property tax caps of the 1990s. • Doing away with the personal kicker. • Taking another run at reining in the expanding cost of PERS. • Reducing state spending in other areas to increase spending on public schools. • Proposing a truly progressive sales tax. • Revisiting other revenue proposals, including a carbon tax. We already can hear the howls of protest: Voters will never give up their kicker, reconsider the property tax caps or approve a sales tax, no matter how progressive. But it’s important to remember two things: There are lots of ideas out there besides these, and some of the state’s brightest minds just spent massive amounts of money fighting each other. Just think what could have happened if they were working toward a common outcome. Gov. Kate Brown must convene talks among the key parties. Their task is to address the shortfall legislators will face when they convene in January, and also work toward a more permanent solution. Furthermore, taxpayers must recognize there is no free ride when it comes to solving the state’s budget woes. As Measure 97’s opponents correctly demonstrated, a tax aimed solely at the boogeyman of big business won’t leave everyone else unscathed. The big challenges confronting Oregon have yet to be resolved. No one has time to gloat or hold grudges. Fortunately, the solutions lie in Salem, where there’s a history of cooperation when stakes are high. We believe Oregon is still a place where government can work. But it will require that unions, the business lobby and the Democrats and Republicans to put aside bruised feelings and consider what is best for all of Oregon.
