Review of the Tulsa Chamber's 2017 Legislative Breakfast, and the Oklahoma State Budget

Friday morning I attended the @TulsaChamber ’s legislative breakfast. Several Oklahoma state legislators were in attendance to report on “how things went” this past session.

Everybody reports that this was the toughest, worst legislative session they’ve ever been in. Of course the budget that passed is fairly terrible on the education front and perhaps not even legal.

The bright spot was that a lot of my fellow Republicans seem to be waking up that we have a real Revenue problem, and it’s no longer taboo to say that. But the darkest moment for me was when a certain representative in the crowd in his comments said “You cannot tax your way to prosperity.” This is cute quip, quoting Winston Churchill, one of my favorite fellows to quote, and this is a quote I agree with up to a point. But the troubling part is that you could tell this particular legislator was completely black and white on this issue, such that even as his state’s education system is in financial flames, he is unwilling to budge on this ideological point. This basically amounts to a “no taxes ever, government is always evil” outlook on life, which is wrongheaded. The extreme example is this: No taxes ever means no roads. No taxes ever means no public education system. No roads and no education system hurts existing business and drives new business away. The less extreme example is that too little taxes means poor roads and poor education system, and poor ability to attract and retain business. All the business prosperity in the world won’t save you if taxes are too low. And you’ll never get all the business in the world if businesses think your state can’t manage itself, or maintain an educated workforce.

So we see that too little tax can hurt the economy just as much as too much. Even though I consider myself a conservative and I work at an Oil and Gas company, I have the sense to see that there is a tax minimum that every society must have in place, at both the corporate and personal level, to maintain basic services. Oklahoma is no longer meeting that minimum. Even our fiscally conservative @GovernorMaryFallin admits we do not have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem. Yet when she tried to lead her party to sensible solutions this session, bright bulbs like the one above refused to budge on his “taxes are evil” stance, taking us all down with him.

I urge you to consider carefully your next vote. I do not want to vote in a bunch of big spenders like we have in Washington - but remember that in Oklahoma we have a balanced budget amendment to help avoid that. So if you see a candidate that is using words like “never” and “always”, that person is not fit to govern. Governing is a leadership position, which means taking in the lay of the land and making hard compromises to move forward. You can be principled and still recognize when a particular principle has been carried too far.

I can tell you this: the Republican party of Oklahoma better grow up and start leading, and stop letting a frankly immature far right minority kill common sense measures. Otherwise they’re going to lose their spot as top party in the state, and an important control in making sure we spend just enough and not too much.