Why do we have a partisan political system?
It can hardly be for the salutary effects of watching would-be "statesmen" brave the snows of New Hampshire, savoring the chowder and earnestly promising high school gymnasiums full of confused seniors that the battle to protect their abortion rights and their ethanol subsidies will never die.
No, if there is a benefit to partisanship it is the opportunity afforded the "loyal opposition" to offer a principled challenge to the bureaucrats now in power. When Bill Clinton spends an 89-minute State of the Union speech contending things couldn't be better in America -- and then promptly presents a list of 100 new or expanded government ant farms on which we need to spend an extra $300 billion to $700 billion -- thoughtful Americans might hope to hear a principled rebuttal.
The GOP, for instance, might point out that the Democrats' newfound government "surplus" is little more than a bookkeeping trick, created by failing to properly account for long-term federal pension and "insurance" obligations.
If Washington is collecting more than it's spending, why does the government obligate our grandchildren to pay interest on Treasury Bills which it continues to sell as fast as the presses can roll?
And even if there is a "surplus," surely that means tax rates have been set too high to cover government needs. Shouldn't tax rates thus be cut immediately, and across the board?
The loyal opposition might ask whether Mr. Clinton's rosy evaluation covers the 1.7 million Americans now imprisoned -- giving this nation the highest incarceration rate in the world. To the extent that those inmates are violent felons, well and good. But how many actually fell afoul of newly-dreamed-up edicts of the federal bureaucracy Mr. Clinton now seeks to expand?
Finally, as out of style as it may be, the adult party incurs a moral obligation to point out that every alm the Democrats promise carries with it an equivalent loss of choice and freedom -- sometimes something as simple as the right to take a job at a wage mutually agreed upon by employer and employee.
That's the right which is progressively taken away each time the government imposes a "minimum wage." Common sense warns us that the result of raising everyone's wage to $100 an hour would not be a Rolls-Royce in every garage, but rather massive unemployment.
The effect of bumping the current minimum from $5.15 to $6.15 may be less spectacular, but a certain number of (Republicans estimate up to 500,000) low-skilled, part-time or entry-level wage-earners will still be thrown on the dole and replaced with robot hamburger-grilling machines -- while the number of shiftless young unmarried fathers who will be further discouraged from even (start ital)seeking(end ital) that first rung on the ladder to self-respect may never be known.
Democratic math lessons about folks trying to "support families" on $10,000 ignore the reality that most minimum wage-earners are teens living at home or retirees supplementing a pension. The few parents who do earn minimum wage are free to work more than 40 hours, to take a second job, or to apply themselves and earn promotions.
Yet instead of standing firm against expanding government control of our once-free economy, the Republican response on State of the Union night was little more than a pathetic "We are (start ital)not(end ital) hard-hearted! We can keep feeding the Farley-Roosevelt Ponzi scheme tax-grinder as well as (start ital)any(end ital) Democrat!"
And the Republican-dominated Senate was apparently whistling the same tune Feb. 2 as it pre-emptively caved in and voted to boost the minimum wage by $1 an hour over three years.
Did this win them the left-wing love they so crave? Of course not.
''The watered-down wage proposal in this bill is an insult to hard-working men and women,'' stormed Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., sponsor of a Democratic proposal to activate the wage hike in only (start ital)two(end ital) years.
Gearing up for their traditional fall campaign, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart echoed: ''That's not the kind of legislation the president can sign.'' Mr. Lockhart cited the lengthy three-year phase-in and ''a bevy of unpaid-for tax cuts for the special interests.''
("Special interests" like self-employed persons who would now be allowed to deduct 100 percent of their health-insurance costs, that is. While "unpaid-for" is, of course, the current Washington euphemism for "Taxpayers might actually end up keeping a little more of what they earn.")
Why slide the minimum-wage hike into a bankruptcy law which had no such provision when it emerged from the House, in the first place -- along with beefed-up penalties for powdered cocaine "crimes" and methamphetamine manufacture, as though (start ital)that(end ital) were any of the federal government's business? (See: "imprisoned for violating newly-dreamed-up bureaucratic edicts," above.)
Yes, it's a campaign year. But if the Senate Republicans were hoping to run on the Democratic-Socialist Police-State ticket, they may find it's too late to change their registrations, anyway.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
* * *
To subscribe, send a message to vinsends-request@ezlink.com, from your NEW address, including the word "subscribe" (with no quotation marks) in the "Subject" line.
All I ask of electronic subscribers is that they not RE-forward my columns until on or after the embargo date which appears at the top of each, and that (should they then choose to do so) they copy the columns in their entirety, preserving the original attribution.
The Vinsends list is maintained by Alan Wendt in Colorado, who may be reached directly at alan@ezlink.com. The web sites for the Suprynowicz column are at http://www.infomagic.com/liberty/vinyard.htm, and http://www.nguworld.com/vindex. The Vinyard is maintained by Michael Voth in Flagstaff, who may be reached directly at mvoth@infomagic.com.