JACKSON — Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s state treasurer, showed out at a recent Capitol press luncheon as a politically ambitious young man who also is a true believer of the Republican hard right.
Reeves recited the same talking points as the GOP’s “no” brigade in Washington, which is trying to sabotage President Obama’s economic stimulus package as he tackles the mountainous job of rebuilding the nation’s economy left in shambles by George W. Bush.
“You’ve got 12 years worth of pent-up, left-wing nutty San Francisco ideas,” is how Reeves described Obama’s $785 billion stimulus package. Forget that Mississippi gets at least $2.8 billion for everything from rescuing Medicaid to building critically needed bridges and saving school districts from drastic budget cuts.
Reeves’ recipe for jump-starting economic recovery was the standard tired, worn-out GOP formula: cut taxes.
Tax cuts? Isn’t that what Bush gave us the past eight years? Cut taxes at the top and the money would trickle down, Bush theorized. Trouble is the trickle got only as far as Wall Street. That made Bernie Madoff and “Sir” Allen Stanford happy. Result: The rich got richer and the poor, poorer, and the nation’s economy cratered.
Reeves’ appearance at the Capitol press corps luncheon was widely seen as a kickoff of his ambitions to climb higher up the state’s elective political ladder. Those who know him say Reeves has his eye on the lieutenant governor’s office, which Phil Bryant will vacate to seek the governorship in 2011, when Haley Barbour is term-limited.
But with tensions over legislative strategies evident between Barbour and Bryant, Reeves could emerge as Barbour’s chosen heir to succeed him. That possibility was seen when a reporter asked Reeves what he was running for. He gave the standard response that he was just concentrating on the job to which he was elected.
How Reeves in 2003 was plucked by Republicans from a low-level job at a Jackson bank and put into the then-open state treasurer’s office at barely 29 years old is worth recalling. Mississippi Democrats had high hopes of electing Gary Anderson, an experienced financial consultant who had been state budget officer, as the first black to hold statewide office since Reconstruction. No surprise: The white guy won.
Reeves was taking bows last week that Consumer Reports had rated MACS, the state pre-paid college tuition plan he oversees, among the top five of such state programs as to expenses and fees in the plan’s management. However, the publication didn’t rate the market value of MACS assets. Below, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.
Legislative budgeters preparing the FY2010 budget last fall, aware that in this bad economy some states had decided to shut down their pre-paid college tuition plans, managed to drag information out of Reeves as to the fiscal soundness of the Mississippi plan. The treasurer eventually conceded that MACS had a $40 million unfunded liability (the shortage if it had to pay off then-existing tuition savings accounts.)
Last week, when Mississippi’s House was debating its appropriations calendar, Rep. Johnny Stringer, D-Montrose, the committee chair, was asked by a member to describe the financial condition of the state’s pre-paid college tuition plan. “It’s on life support,” Stringer declared.
With the stock market down 50 percent and college tuitions on the rise, fiscally savvy lawmakers especially worry that Reeves continues hawking MACS in TV spots to get more parents and grandparents to invest in the pre-paid tuition plan. They know that the state treasury would have to pick up the tab if it goes bad.
Now that Reeves, at age 34, is warming up to become a longtime major player in state Republican politics, it’s time to focus scrutiny on his less-than-transparent handling of the treasurer’s office.
What immediately comes to mind is to learn into which banks — and how much — he has placed deposits of state funds. (That’s the choicest patronage plum of his job.) Let’s see how deposits match with bank officials’ political contributions.
And back to Reeves’ “nutty ideas” characterization of items in the Obama stimulus package: Try telling that to state Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds, or Transportation Director Butch Brown, or the 600,000 poor Mississippians who depend on Medicaid for health care.
