Role reversing political parties

I see a huge irony with the role reversals in this political campaign for state office. Many Democrats and Independents have snatched away the fiscal conservatism flag from their Republican challengers and are racing up the November election hill to plant it in front of the ballot box. Will the Republicans continue to show themselves innocent of nearly all cognitive financial ability and restraint?

This year’s staggering $1.6 billion worth of red ink has stained virtually every legislator’s hands — and not a single red cent was vetoed. This Legislature continued to grow the massive state bureaucracy and welfare entitlement programs despite all campaign promises to do just the opposite. I feel it’s the job of conservative voters to remind them that the grassroots Republican voters are paying attention to their cross dressing with their ideological opposites on the left.

After speaking to a number of legislators, I am convinced that they have forgotten one of the cornerstones our party is built on. Unrestrained growth of bureaucracy — like what we have annually in Juneau, destroys freedom, privacy, and personal initiative while making people dependent on the welfare state and state government jobs. Per capita, Alaska has more state government load than any other state, which is crushing our economy under a mountain of red tape and keeping our poorest perpetually caught in the welfare net.

As a corollary to the first point, unrestrained government growth is also the No. 1 threat to our financial solvency as a state. With our declining oil revenues coupled with our automatic annual state bureaucracy growth of 6 percent to 9 percent per year, Alaska is going to run out of savings pretty quickly and have to either establish a broad-based tax or raid the PFD or both.

One-third of our state savings were drained in the last two years alone. Also, a broke multi-billion dollar state bureaucracy is very politically unstable in its tax and regulation policies, which makes new companies wary of investing. A state fiscal reckoning is on the near horizon — perhaps as early as 2018 or sooner as oil prices continue to plummet with widespread hydraulic fracking in use in freer oil producing states like Oklahoma and Texas where new oil companies don’t have to penetrate Alaska’s gigantic state bureaucracies like our more than 1,200-person, $160 million DNR department.

Less state government is the key to our state’s economic salvation not more of it. One legislator related to me the thought process in Juneau where you had to vote a certain way to avoid losing your in seat to the opposite political party. It’s that sloppy thinking that has red ink covering all their hands.

The Alaska GOP has an absolutely horrid caucus rule that basically requires legislators to agree months prior to vote for the final budget in exchange for a committee seat. This delegates the entire budget process to the house and senate finance co-chairs, i.e. four people control billions. When legislators exchange their elected budget vote birthright for a committee chair bowl of porridge, they disenfranchise the very constituents who elected them. After all, what is more important than the state budget vote given the plethora of bills generated with attached fiscal notes?

I have asked more than one career legislator to refuse to join the caucus in exchange for a committee seat and received bifurcating answers. There is however an advantage to joining the caucus in that it gives them group cover — like a formation of threatened musk oxen — and thereby diffuses individual responsibility and culpability for the $1.6-billion-and-growing malignant state budget deficit. This makes the politician a hero for bringing home the bacon but only corporately responsible for putting the state on a financial path similar to that of Detroit or Stockton.

This will be a campaign season of cross-dressing politicians. Nearly every R up for reelection voted to grow the size and scope of Juneau, but will try to distance themselves from that fact by replacing their big-government lace with more traditional conservative campaign clothes. Many D’s and I’s now have sported the fiscal conservative look on the campaign trail and are making R’s very nervous on the constituent dance floor.

I’m not happy with this role reversal, nor should voters be. The unstated goal of the GOP for some time now has been to continually move to the ever-drifting political center to keep in power. The problem is that over time you lose your political soul and identity. It’s time to revive the spirit in the Republican Party, which is really the spirit of America based on the dream of growth and enlightenment through individual freedom as opposed to the supremacy of the state. The GOP platform is a great one and the Alaska Republican Assembly mission is to hold that torch high both on and off the campaign trail.

Daniel Hamm is the President of the Alaska Republican Assembly in Palmer.