Schansberg Snipes at Hill

Congressman Baron Hill had a letter to the News & Tribune yesterday. I'll let it slide that it looks an awful lot like a mixing of his press releases on those issues.

Former Libertarian 9th District Congressional candidate Eric Schansberg has wasted no time in firing off a reply letter, which he sent out on his mailing list.

I assume that it will shortly run in the News & Tribune, but I will post it here in lieu of that.

I appreciate Rep. Hill’s efforts to keep his constituents informed about his activity. In a recent letter to the editor, he praised a $14 billion Federal program that would result in $351 million in benefits for Indiana. H.R. 720 would fund the Water Quality Financing Act, providing taxpayer-subsidized loans to local communities—to construct wastewater treatment plants and water pollution abatement projects.

Let’s do the numbers on this. A $14 billion program costs $190 in taxes from the average family of four. Payouts of $351 million to Indiana would benefit the average family of four in Indiana by $220. The good news is that we’ll be receiving more than is being taken from us. The bad news is that this extra money is coming from taxpayers elsewhere in the country. For example, I don’t think people in Colorado will be happy to have money taken from them to pay for a wastewater treatment plant in Indiana. Is this an ethical use of government force?

Another question is why the federal government is involved in funding local projects. Practically, when we have a local problem, one solution is to send a bunch of money to Washington, they take a cut of it to pay for their bureaucracy, send some of it back to us with strings attached, and we address the local problem. Another solution would be to send the money to Indianapolis and maybe reduce the bureaucratic costs and strings. Perhaps the best solution would be to keep the money and the solutions at the local level.

D. Eric Schansberg
Professor of Economics
Indiana University Southeast

Can you say rematch?

Sure, I knew you could.

Though I suspect that wasn't the rematch you were expecting.

ALSO: I am sure that Schansberg (and those concerned with public policy and taxes) would be interested to know that HR 720 will be paid for by retroactively increasing maritime tonnage taxes, which normally go to fund the Coast Guard.

A maritime tonnage tax is a fee paid by a vessel whenever it docks in an American port, based upon its displacement (a nautical term for its weight).

This includes giant freight vessels bringing foreign imports into the United States, and the tax increase will certainly--Economics 101--be passed on to American consumers in the form of price increases.

HR 720 more than doubles the maritime tonnage taxes retroactively back to 2006, and doubles them again after 2008.

Of course, the Democrats edited the US Code where the tonnage taxes are referenced to rename them as "duties" and thus try to avoid calling a tax increase a tax increase.

The doubling and doubling again of maritime tonnage taxes came as a part of the Democrats' sham pay-go rules, an interesting system that gives them an automatic excuse to increase taxes any time that they find a new way for the government to spend your money.

As these taxes are concealed inside other legislation, they tend to go unnoticed by most people and are never covered in the press.