JACKSON — His victory, Haley Barbour tells us, was a “big conservative mandate.” Is more conservatism what we need in Mississippi? Conservatism we've had in state governance for the last half-century and where has it gotten us? Last place in almost every index you can find.
Barbour's idea of what “conservative” means is scary if we can judge by some remarks he's made, and some actions he took in his first administration.
In his victory speech on TV election night, Barbour let slip that he plans to “cut taxes” in the second term. That's different than what he had been saying: only that he wanted to make a complete study of the state's tax system to find if taxes should be adjusted.
Now we learn he's already made up his mind to cut taxes. Certainly a cut in the 7 cent sales tax on groceries is not what he's talking about. You can be sure, it's tax cuts for his best friends, corporations and businesses.
We've already had a taste of what kind of tax cuts he has in mind. In 2005, he pushed through a reduction in the unemployment payroll tax paid by businesses, but blocked raising maximum weekly benefits for laid-off workers, the lowest nationwide. No compassionate conservatism there.
It doesn't take a new study of the state tax structure to find the most obvious imbalance in the existing tax code: the sales tax is too high and the income tax is too low.
Ever since the 1970s, business and industry lobbyists have held powerful sway in the Mississippi Legislature, and as a result, the state has become more heavily dependent on consumer taxes — primarily the sales tax — and less dependent on income or corporate taxes. When individuals pay over two-thirds of state income taxes and corporations less than one-third, you know something's out of whack.
Under Barbour, corporate lobbyists cut an even wider swath in the Legislature. Witness the fact that his nephew, Henry Barbour, not only works for a group with major corporate clients, but is paid $40,000 by a company that has the state contract to build Katrina cottages bought by a congressional $400,000 hurricane relief appropriation.
Some political writers seem to bemoan the fact that Barbour won't have control of the newly elected Legislature. It's certainly not because he didn't try, more than any governor ever had in history.
While there were other instances where he or his Republican proxies recruited true-believer legislative candidates to oust key Democrats, the prime example was the Barbour juggernaut's attempt to take out highly respected Democratic Rep. Cecil Brown of Jackson, considered the Legislature's leading fiscal and education authority.
Corey Wilson, a young Jackson lawyer, was brought out and financed by wealthy businessman Leland Speed, former head of Barbour's Mississippi Development Authority. Longtime GOP bankroller Billy Mounger also go into the act. Though he seemed in trouble when Wilson campaign signs blanketed the district, when the votes were counted Brown won handily.
Barbour even walked South Jackson Senate District 29 with one of his Senate puppets, three-term GOP incumbent, Sen. Richard White. But 36-year-old David Blount, the brightest new Democratic figure to appear on the Mississippi political scene, soundly trounced White.
Blount, formerly a top assistant to retiring Secretary of State Eric Clark, months before launching his Senate campaign analyzed the demographics of the district, and designed a campaign strategy that worked to perfection.
The new state Senate Democratic majority could well utilize Blount's talents as a political strategist to be the whip for what seems obligatory: a Senate Democratic Caucus. Barbour, as the most professional politician to hit this state, has sharply divided the Legislature along partisan lines, so now to protect their priorities, Democrats in both chambers have been forced to organize their forces.
Barbour boasted in the campaign that he had inherited a $720 million “deficit” in 2003 from the Musgrove Administration. Pure bunk on several counts. State law bars the Legislature from adopting a state budget on adjournment that is not balanced by anticipated revenues.
The nation in 2003 had fallen into an economic recession and all states, Mississippi included, experienced a sharp shortfall in tax collections. The state's legislative budgeters closely monitored the shortfall and began figuring ways to pull in money from any available source to balance the next year's budget. At most, the shortfall reached $350 million, not $720 million.
Right now, state tax collections for several months have been below estimates, posing for Barbour the same budget shortfall Musgrove faced. And with fuel prices skyrocketing, inflation is on the horizon. A recession would be right behind. Could the state budget miracle Barbour claims to have produced soon turn into his nightmare?
