Moffett Education Funding And Unspoken Truths

By Mike Moffett, NH Journal

Some truths are unspoken. There are plenty of examples. And there are understandable reasons why these truths are unspoken.

So, here’s a good New Hampshire example of an unspoken truth: “Learning is not a serious priority for many proponents of higher education spending.”

I write that as someone who has spent much of his life in education, having taught in public, parochial and military schools, as well as on the community college and university levels. A member of the NEA and the SEA, I served on two different school boards and did several terms on our House Education Committee. So, let’s speak some education establishment truths.

Many folks see the school funding issue for what it is — a Trojan Horse to advance a hidden agenda that involves creating a state income tax. “Progressives” are quietly OK with excessive education spending that raises our property taxes to painful levels. Some on the blue team perhaps even seek to exploit the fiscal pain they inflict.

People who should know better claim that Concord should do more. But unlike Washington, D.C., Concord cannot print money. (Many folks do not understand that, thus the need for better civics education. But I digress.)

A blue mantra is “Property Tax Relief.” Progressives want an income tax on “the rich” to “lower property taxes.” But overtaxing to address overtaxing is not only counterintuitive, it is counterfactual. Ask Connecticut, New Jersey, or any other blue state.

A recent State House hearing on CACR 12 resulted in people speaking previously unspoken truths. Local blues and education establishment types oppose this proposed income tax constitutional resolution being on our November ballots because it would actually allow citizens a say. Liberals desperately want a N.H. income tax empowering them to grow government and hire people who will redirect their higher wages to blue politicians. It happens routinely in the education world. Campaign donations are public! It is really a form of money laundering, a sordid shell game — especially considering that we spend around $23,000 per student (more than most other states) during a time of decreasing enrollments and lowered test scores. Claremont already gets around $13,000 per student annually from Concord, with millions of dollars mysteriously disappearing into some murky Sullivan County abyss.

This liberal government growth formula worked wonders for progressives in places like California. I loved Ronald Reagan, but as California governor in 1968 he signed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act regarding collective bargaining for public employees, thus sowing the seeds for an ever-growing unionized public sector that has given California a top marginal rate is 12.3 percent. That rises to 13.3 percent for income over $1 million with the Mental Health Services surcharge

Millions have fled for red states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, and even purple New Hampshire. But many are stuck there in an ever-worsening fiscal spiral, not to mention all the accompanying overregulation.

A major blue state challenge involves funding pensions for countless new public sector employees. This pension commitment requires ever more tax revenue, and blue states are utterly screwed until someday, inevitably, they somehow declare bankruptcy — as Cleveland did in the 1970s.

New Hampshire is an island of fiscal sanity in a blue ocean of overspending and overtaxing. Maine just joined Washington state and others with a new “millionaires” tax — a counterproductive, misbegotten levy that earlier proved disastrous in Massachusetts, New York, and everywhere else it has been imposed. That citizens flee blue states for red states is a cautionary tale that New Hampshire’s liberal income tax proponents ignore at their own peril.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte fully understands this dynamic and unabashedly campaigned to not “Mass Up New Hampshire.” Our governor was earlier encumbered by a pledge to enhance Group II first-responder pension benefits, but with communication and compromise a tight two-year budget was passed. New Hampshire’s lack of a broad-based tax imposes a fiscal discipline that serves us well. We are blessed with a chief executive and a citizen legislature that navigates spending shoals without having to create or raise taxes — thus New Hampshire’s astoundingly high quality of life rankings in so many areas. At least until we succumb to “the blues.”

Make no mistake, most Granite Staters oppose the liberal taxing and spending agenda, even when it is dishonestly camouflaged by bogus property tax relief rhetoric or cynical school spending advocacy.

That is a spoken truth!

State Rep. Mike Moffett (R-Loudon) is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.