Washington Logic

There was a song fifteen or twenty years ago called Cowboy Logic, which detailed the worldview of the American cowboy. Sometimes this logic differed from what modern man might call convention, but it made sense in the end. Today, I introduce to you the concept of Washington Logic. It is also counter-intuitive, but unlike Cowboy Logic, it doesn't come back around to making sense later.

The following list is by no means comprehensive, but here are a few examples of when you know your leaders have been in Washington too long.

DC fallacy #1: Maintaining the same tax structure next year as this year is a tax cut.

The President has been throwing this logic around, hoping you'll buy it. This would be like going to buy a car and having the salesman tell you he'd cut you an even better deal... by giving you the same price that's on the sticker.

DC fallacy #2: Going to a higher tax rate next year is NOT raising taxes.

It's easy for politicians to talk about “letting the tax cuts expire”. But this would be like your employer offering you a raise... to your current salary.

DC fallacy #3: Cutting taxes is the same thing as increasing spending.

It is true that more debt is invoked if you reduce the amount of money you bring in while continuing to spend every penny you used to make. That's why most of us who have had to figure it out on less money have made corresponding cuts in our expenditures. Still, given fallacy #1, you really can't claim an increase in spending when there's no tax cut on the table anyway.

DC fallacy #4: Raising taxes will create jobs.

If this were true, states with the highest tax rates would also have the highest job growth. What do we see instead? States with more favorable tax structures have job growth while California becomes more and more insolvent. Democrats always talk about Republicans who give tax cuts to companies who send jobs overseas. But tell me this: if the Dems make the tax structure in the US unfavorable, who is really responsible for corporations moving operations offshore?

DC fallacy #5: By postponing the vote on extending the Bush tax cuts, Democrat lawmakers will fool voters into voting for them.

Sorry, Senator Reid, but the smokescreen isn't going to work. You had the opportunity to start the economy moving in a positive direction by letting the job creators know they wouldn't be facing a major tax increase in 2011. The only reason you would choose not to take that vote right now is because you are planning to raise taxes on those who can affect recovery. Then again, putting your agenda ahead of economic recovery has been a theme of yours over the past 21 months, hasn't it?

A Look at Economics

Let’s say I’m a really busy guy. So I hire a service to pick up my lunch orders every day. I call the order in, the service pays for it, and they deliver it to my desk. To keep it from becoming a bookkeeping nightmare, the service and I agree on a daily flat fee that is intended to cover the cost of the meal, the cost to transport it from the restaurant to my desk, and some margin of profit. Based on this fee, the service gives me guidelines of what will and will not be covered in terms of restaurants, meal types, timeframe, etc. The service and I have a good working relationship within those parameters.

Now imagine that a regulatory agency decided that we need to enact legislation to mandate what lunch delivery services must provide. Suddenly, where I had been getting food from Arby’s and Chili’s around the corner, my service now has to offer everyone food from more expensive and more distant restaurants. What happens? They have to raise their rates to cover the new requirements. The problem is… I’m happy with the old service. I don’t want to pay more – I just want my old plan. But now the old plan is not available. The old plan is illegal.

Or maybe they couldn’t raise their rates, because the new legislation has a requirement for what they are allowed to charge for the new minimum plan. So my service, not wanting to close up shop and put all their employees out of work, decides to pursue customers who are less likely to use the more expensive services. If they are successful in targeting people like me who statistically cost them less money, they can stay afloat, but that means they’re making a huge profit margin on less demanding customers while losing money on the more expensive clients. People like me figure out this disparity and decide it’s not worth having a service after all. We leave en masse, tipping the scales away from profitability and into bankruptcy. The government pays billions to bail out all the failing lunch delivery services without addressing any of the underlying issues, thus prolonging the problem while buying dependency from a once-thriving industry.

I prefer choice and competition in my medical insurance plans, not a one-size-fits-all approach to “protect” me. Wait, did I say insurance? You know I meant lunch delivery services.

An open letter to Senator Harry Reid

Senator, you may well be the best campaigner in the history of American politics. Six years ago, you ran as the candidate who was “independent – like Nevada”. To call the second-highest Democrat in the Senate (highest, after Tom Daschle lost his seat) “independent” takes a certain amount of intellectual courage, to say the least. However, your latest campaign eclipses even this so-called intellectual courage. Sharron Angle is “too extreme”? No, Senator, I assert it is you who are too extreme.

We are now years into an economic crisis created by lending and housing policies you supported. Your colleagues Mr. Frank and Mr. Dodd may have been the architects of the collapse, but you opposed the reforms that could have prevented it. And now that it is in full swing, what is your solution? Raise taxes. Engineer a takeover of the medical industry. Throw money at car companies without addressing the underlying issues that got them into trouble in the first place. Pay lip service to energy independence while your party blocks efforts to achieve it. Create unprecedented deficits through expanded federal programs – both of which will literally take an act of Congress to un-make.

Senator, fostering an environment in which the economy can grow – thus creating jobs and wealth – should have been at the top of your priority list, and you have certainly been in a position to control the discussion. And you know something about economic recovery, because you were in Washington when Jimmy Carter’s recession gave way to the economic growth enjoyed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But instead, you have mortgaged the future of this country for the opportunity to take a stab at your liberal agenda.

And what about these quotes? How would you have characterized Ms. Angle, had she said the following?

• “I think it is much easier to be a good member of the Church and a Democrat than a good member of the Church and a Republican.” So are you saying your political life is the result of a holy calling? Didn’t you criticize Ms. Angle for saying just that?
• “I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK.” This equating enforcement of immigration policy with being anti-Latino is tired. Almost as tired as when you attributed President Obama’s success to being a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
• “As long as we follow the President’s path in Iraq, the war is lost.” This was in 2007. Today, with no major policy shift in Iraq, your party is claiming victory.
• “I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.” Senator, CBS News reported your approval rating at 8% earlier this year.

Some people may buy into your attack ads. These are many of the same people who voted for you six years ago, thinking that such a high-ranking Democrat representing our state would pay dividends. We’ve certainly seen those dividends in Nevada: nationwide highs in unemployment and foreclosures, and a lack of any coherent plan to correct the current problems, to say nothing of preventing their recurrence. Whatever credibility your experience as a legislator affords you, your record of focusing on the wrong problems, poor solutions, and ignoring your constituents more than cancels it out. The experience you’ve picked up in your 27 years on Capitol Hill has not made you a better senator but a better politician. I’m sorry to say you won’t be getting my vote this November. You’re just too extreme.