Politics /Eng/er 's Moment
Norquist, Grover G.
0 n August 10, Bill Clinton signed the largest tax increase in American history. The following week, Michigan governor John Engler signed into law Senate Bill 1, the largest tax cut at the state...
...Republicans cheerfully voted SB1 through the Michigan Senate, the Republican leader in the state House brought the bill up first thing next morning, and—although by then Democrats and education lobbyists realized Stabenow's gambit was too clever by half—the tax cut passed the state House 69-35...
...But Engler has made it clear that first, there must be a net tax cut for Michiganders, and second, there will be no discussion of replacing "lost" tax revenue until real educational reforms are in place...
...William Bennett points out that Engler has positioned himself brilliantly...
...The Democrats and the MEA can speak of nothing but their desire to get $6 billion from taxpayers next year, while Engler and the Republican leadership are speaking about empowering parents andradically reforming the present education monopoly...
...Last year, the same district closed down its schools in March, rather than raise property taxes...
...But Michigan's constitution—like those of 22 other states—also allows the right of initiative...
...On August 17, the county of Kalaska voted down a property-tax increase to cover its school budget...
...Michigan's constitution, in fact, has the strictest such constitutional wording in the nation...
...The United Auto Workers (UAW) is also targeting Engler, not only because he supports the North American Free Trade Agreement, but also because, today, the UAW's largest local union is not an auto plant, but state welfare workers angry over Engler's reforms...
...Engler has proved himself willing to tackle special interests...
...The result is that Republican leader Paul Hillegonds and Democrat Curtis Hertell hold the speakership on alternate months...
...And if someday he were to run for president, it would be the second most important undertaking of his career...
...Just as the establishment had to defend against term-limit initiatives in fourteen states in 1992—and lost every one—so too will the teachers' unions have to finance campaigns in four or five states in 1994 to thwart school choice...
...Michigan's Republicans were also helped by a decade of party-building on the part of activists like Spencer Abraham, now the likely Republican candidate to challenge scandal-tainted Senator Don Riegle...
...In the same years that George Bush was padding the federal payroll by more than the 150,000 employees eliminated in the Reagan years, Engler could boast an 8 percent drop in state-government employment...
...When-choice-in-education forces believe themselves ready, they can simply collect the 260,000 signatures necessary and force a plebiscite to allow educational vouchers for public, private, or religious schools...
...E ngler hopes to pass public education vouchers this year...
...It has been a long fight for Michigan's GOP...
...Already, Michigan has had a small taste of choice in a pilot program run through Wayne State University, which will create a charter school with 330 openings this fall...
...But Senate majority leader Dick Posthumus is not cut from the same cloth as Bob Michel or Bob Dole...
...Posthumus insists that reform means giving parents control over the education of their children...
...The consensus emerging from the state's free-market think-tank, the Mackinac Center, leading members of the legislature, and Engler advisers is that the governor will insist that all education funding flow through parents in the form of vouchers, not through fixed public schools...
...The Bradley Foundation is sponsoring a similar effort in Milwaukee, as are foundations in San Antonio and Atlanta...
...More than 5,200 applications poured in for the 330 spaces...
...And the pro-choice forces need only one successful state to defeat the NEA, whose real fear is not that school choice might harm education but that one choice victory could lead to fifty...
...Engler cannot demand full public and private school choice this fall, because the Michigan state constitution was amended in 1970 to forbid state or local aid to private schools, whether secular or religious...
...Engler won the governorship in November 1990 campaigning against Blanchard's small proposed property-tax cut as only "a nickel a week...
...Engler also won thirteen waivers from the federal government in August 1992 that allowed Michigan to increase the number of welfare recipients who must work to 21 percent, almost triple the national average...
...The other union, the Michigan Federation of Teachers, has even filed a lawsuit asking the courts to oversee the replacement of the property tax...
...The parent could take this voucher to any public school...
...Because the Democrats control the House speakership in October and December, it is most likely that legislation will move in November...
...he political climate in Michigan is T ripe for school choice...
...William Bennett and former education secretary Lamar Alexander have formed a group to help organize and fund school-choice initiatives, first in 1993 in California and then in another four or five states in 1994...
...Engler will also insist that property owners be given a significant tax break—at least 10 percent ($600 million) is the word on the street...
...Abraham's bid for the Republican nomination for Senate has been endorsed by 65 of 83 Republican county chairmen and two-thirds of the Republican Central Committees...
...Engler signed it into law on August 19...
...If J. Edgar Hoover was right that "a man is honored by his friends and distinguished by his enemies," then Engler is truly distinguished...
...Vandenberg is modeled on a successful Golden Rule Insurance Company-funded program that provides scholarship grants of $800, up to half of tuition, for low-income students in Indianapolis...
...Two months later, Abraham was elected Michigan Republican Party Chairman and conservative Republicans began a decade-long march through the institutions...
...Democratic politicians are now demanding that all $6 billion in "lost" tax revenue be immediately replaced...
...Thus, in the summer of 1994, every parent could receive in the mail a voucher or scholarship worth, say, $4,500 per child...
...Former Education Secretary William Bennett traveled to Michigan the Monday after the SB 1 vote, to attend a fundraiser for Posthumus's Vandenberg Foundation, which raises money for scholarships for poor children to attend private schools of their choke...
...Within a year 80,000 people were dropped from the welfare rolls, at an annual savings of $250 million...
...Stabenow and her followers hoped to force the Republican Senate majority to vote "responsibly" against this massive tax cut...
...The Michigan Trial Lawyers Association has recently sent out a questionnaire to its members asking whether they should concentrate on defeating Engler in 1994 or on overturning Engler-supported legislation that reduced abuses of tort law and forbade individuals more than 50 percent at fault from suing for damages...
...And throughout this budgetary game of chicken, local governments have refused to blink...
...On July 20, Debbie Stabenow, a Democratic state senator likely to challenge Engler for governor in November 1994, had introduced an amendment to SB 1 to eliminate all local property taxes spent on Michigan's public school system—$6 billion annually, or two-thirds of total school funding...
...So is the Michigan Education Association (MEA), the more powerful of two bigteachers' unions in the state...
...In 1991, he abolished an entire welfare entitlement program: general assistance for able-bodied individuals...
...Two recall elections resulted, replacing Democrats who voted for Blanchard's taxhike with anti-tax Republicans...
...It would cut property taxes by an average of 65 percent...
...His early efforts to cut and cap local property taxes were defeated by the MEA and the state legislature, but two years into Engler's term, in November 1992, the Republicans picked up six House seats to achieve 55-55 parity in the State House...
...We must first decide what we are going to fund, and only then consider how much to spend and through what tax...
...That two-vote shift made Engler the Senate Majority leader in December 1983...
...Engler's tax cut is not the end but the beginning of a debate—on broad-based education reform...
...The following week, Michigan governor John Engler signed into law Senate Bill 1, the largest tax cut at the state level in American history...
...In the past, teachers' unions have been able to win tax increases through threatened disruptions, but the MEA no longer has that kind of leverage over Engler...
...The contrast is more than ideological: Clinton's tax hike closed the door on reform and signaled a decision to fund the welfare state rather than reform it...
...Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and a majority every other month in the House...
...If John Engler succeeds in winning parental choice this fall within the public school system, it will inevitably lead to expanded choice involving private schools...
...True, school choice failed at the polls in Oregon in 1990 and Colorado in 1992, but Engler advisors think voters wilt think differently about vouchers once they've experienced the spending power they embody...
...T his unprecedented opportunity to lead on the issue of parental choice in education resulted from years of work by Governor Engler to cut property taxes and tackle the government school monopoly...
...In 1982, Democrat Jim Blanchard narrowly defeated taxpayer activist Dick Headlee in the race for governor, backtracked on a campaign promise, and pushed a 38 percent income-tax hike through a Democrat-controlled legislature...
...That is, none of the property taxes cut will be replaced until the Michigan legislature breaks the unions' education monopoly and votes for real school choice...
...And if he tries to expand the measure to private schools through an initiative in November 1994, he'll have reinforcements...
Vol. 26 • October 1993 • No. 10
