A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Daily Sentinel, April 25, on the president’s plan for dealing with rising gas prices:
President Barack Obama announced over the weekend that the Justice Department has created a task force “with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices.”
Oh great. That should provide scant comfort to consumers who are seeing gasoline prices soar toward $4 per gallon (they’re already beyond that in some locations) just as the summer driving season is upon us.
It’s a typical political reaction to rapidly rising gasoline prices, although more often, it’s a congressional one. Here’s how it usually works:
Gas prices skyrocket. Someone in Congress announces hearings. Oil company executives and Wall Street commodities brokers are paraded before the committee. They are pilloried for being heartless capitalists making obscene profits. But virtually no evidence of conspiracies, price-fixing or supply manipulation is ever revealed.
The president’s prescription for dealing with rising oil prices also included ending taxpayer-subsidies to oil companies and boosting clean energy, which may have value in their own right, but will have no impact on current gasoline prices. It was clearly a distraction by Obama.
Of course, the president and fellow Democrats aren’t the only ones guilty of using rising gasoline prices to attempt to further a political agenda.
Consider the Domestic Jobs, Domestic Energy and Deficit Reduction Act of 2011, introduced in Congress this spring by Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah and Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. Among other things, it would require the federal government to speed up leasing lands for oil shale development. But even its most optimistic boosters acknowledge commercial oil shale production is a decade or more away. It won’t have any significant impact on oil and gas prices before then.
Meanwhile, Obama can legitimately claim that domestic oil production actually increased in 2009 and 2010, but that was largely from wells already permitted and in operation. Many experts fear Obama administration policies will result in a long-term reduction in U.S. production.
For instance, Joseph Mason, a financial expert with both Louisiana State University and the Wharton School of Business, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said at least seven deep-water oil rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Obama’s six-month moratorium on new permits, followed by a definite slowdown in the permit process after the BP oil spill a year ago. Some are leaving the Gulf for foreign waters, Mason said.
Additionally, a recent ruling by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency forced Shell Oil this week to abandon plans to drill for oil off the northern Alaskan coast, according to Fox News. Shell has spent five years and more than $4 billion developing the offshore leases.
The Bishop-Vitter bill attempts to force agencies such as the EPA and Interior Department to take a more reasonable approach to energy development, something that is needed and could help prevent future spikes in gasoline prices.
But for now, experts point to a variety of factors currently driving up gas prices.
First, demand has increased as the global economy slowly climbs out of the recession of the past three years. People are feeling more confident and are driving more. Oil is also being used in more industrial applications.
And, although U.S. oil supplies had been holding their own, a U.S. Department of Energy report released last week said they have begun to decline.
Additionally, unrest in the Middle East, from Egypt to Libya to Syria, has disrupted global supplies and driven up futures prices for oil as investors fear the political situation will get worse.
Finally, the weakening U.S. dollar, driven down in part by Federal Reserve policies, means the prices of commodities such as oil have increased for U.S. buyers.
But those aren’t the kinds of things politicians looking for easy scapegoats are eager to discuss.
Editorial:
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Loveland Daily Reporter-Herald, April 24, on the need to reform the tax code:
The latest trillion-dollar question: If President Barack Obama’s latest deficit panel, led by Vice President Joe Biden, comes up with a long-range, comprehensive plan that can find bipartisan support in Congress, will he ignore it as he did his first panel’s recommendations?
The latest panel will have its first meeting in May, with a goal of coming up with a deficit-reduction plan. The president’s first panel, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, came out with wide-ranging recommendations in December, but only 11 of 18 members supported it. And Obama essentially ignored it, though he now says the commission informed his thinking on his latest budget proposals.
And how will all this square with an upcoming plan from the Senate’s Gang of Six? Those six—Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Mark Warner of Virginia, and Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Crapo of Idaho—have been working on their plan for months.
A case of too many committees working toward the same goal? Maybe, but only if neither can get the job done.
And it needs to get done. The country needs to get away from deficit spending. It needs to start paying down the national debt.
And whatever budget plan emerges needs to include an overhaul of the federal tax code.
Consider this:
About 45 percent of U.S. households didn’t pay federal income taxes last year, according to the Tax Policy Center. While those households fall in all income categories, most earned under $50,000 a year. Yes, they paid Social Security and Medicare taxes, and they paid property taxes, sales taxes and the like. And an argument can be made for tax breaks for the working poor. But the tax code is too full of incentives, breaks and loopholes. And in its current form, a system in which 55 percent of taxpaying households are supporting the federal government isn’t proving workable.
A common refrain these days is that the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the world. But are U.S. corporations paying the highest taxes in the world? Certainly not all of them. A recent Associated Press story noted that most corporations take advantage of “loopholes, credits and the ability to shelter earnings abroad” to pay much less than the 35 percent corporate tax rate.
Last year, for example, Hewlett-Packard’s tax rate ended up being 20.2 percent, Apple Inc.’s was 24 percent, Google Inc.’s was 21 percent and General Electric Co.’s was a mere 7.4 percent. How does that constitute a level playing field?
Forget the mantras from both Democrats and Republicans. Stop talking about raising taxes and cutting taxes. Start with reforming the tax code.
But both sides also will need to continue to look at wise spending cuts for the foreseeable future. And no federal departments should be immune from scrutiny, including defense. And, yes, changes will have to be made to Social Security and Medicare to keep them solvent.
And let’s not forget all the talk about weeding out waste and fiscal mismanagement in government. Just recently, the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration reported that the Internal Revenue Service paid out $513 million in homebuyer tax credits to people who likely didn’t qualify for them.
That brings us right back to tax reform. How many other tax breaks are being exploited to the tune of millions of dollars?
If tax avoidance is truly a way of life in America, instead of getting the government we deserve, we’re getting a government we’re falling all over ourselves to avoid paying for.
Editorial:
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STATE:
The Coloradoan, April 23, on a plan to merge the Division of Wildlife with Colorado State Parks:
A good idea could go bad very quickly if state lawmakers don’t harness a plan to merge the Division of Wildlife and Colorado State Parks.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, who is leading the merger effort, believes the state will save money by creating a Division of Parks and Wildlife.
Hickenlooper’s directive to the state Legislature is refreshingly bold and appears to be well intended: Why not merge two agencies that appear to have so much in common? Surely, there is some overlap there, right?
Not so fast.
Saying that a merger will save the state money doesn’t necessarily make it so. Senate Bill 208, in fact, ignores the fiscal issue by mandating a merger regardless of whether cost efficiencies can be achieved. Rather, DOW and State Parks will be given a year to meet with the public to determine the best way of going about the merger. That’s a backward way of achieving such a goal. The Senate passed the measure overwhelmingly recently, and the House is expected to take up the bill by May 2.
The two agencies likely share some common ground, but they do not share the same mission. Nor do they share funding sources: DOW, funded through hunting and fishing licenses, manages the state’s 960 wildlife species, regulates hunting and fishing, conducts research and manages 230 wildlife areas. State Parks, funded through user and recreation fees, conserves and manages natural resources in state parks and Colorado’s 114 registered or designated natural areas.
If lawmakers who support this legislation are so sure of the cost savings and efficiencies, then the onus is on them to produce supporting data that a merger is the best, if not only, route.
We acknowledge that the state is in a crisis mode when it comes to its budget, but this also is a key time to move deliberately to protect and reinforce what works while achieving some much-needed efficiencies. Ordering a merger of agencies today that could end up costing the state down the line is irresponsible.
Lawmakers would better serve constituents by ordering a short-term study that involves stakeholders and the general public—not just the agencies—to collect data on how a merger can cut costs and eliminate redundancies. But this study cannot just be based on dollars; it must include a discussion of the public’s expectations regarding its natural resources. This information, not just anecdotes and wishes, must drive an eventual vote on whether the two agencies should merge.
Our state’s recreation areas, abundant wildlife and unmatched natural areas are defining elements of Colorado. Lawmakers are urged to approach this issue armed with information, not just good intentions.
Editorial:
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The Denver Post, April 23, on the progress of congressional redistricting:
There was a time, early in the process, when everyone seemed so optimistic about getting redistricting done in the state legislature this year that it seemed almost peevish to express doubt that it could ever happen.
That time is long past. The committee of five Democrats and five Republicans that was asked to produce a new Colorado redistricting map instead produced 11 maps, drawn by at least three different sets of hands.
At this point, we have a set of Democratic maps, a set of Republican maps and a pair of maps by David Balmer, who is the Republican co-chair but who was basically bounced from the job by Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty.
Instead of a map, there is an impasse and the clock is ticking on the legislative session. And it seems clear that without some minor political miracle, the process is headed back to the courts, where a judge will do the legislature’s job and redraw Colorado’s congressional districts. This is not how the system should work.
The really hard work in redistricting comes with the addition or—for some states—subtraction of seats. For the first time in decades, the Colorado numbers held steady, this time at seven districts. It would seem only some minor nipping and tucking would be required.
And with each party in control of one house, the need for compromise was obvious. But the committee has yet to agree on a map or even agree on the principles of how to begin drawing a successful map, even though those principles have been laid for them in earlier court rulings.
Certain principles should have been easy to agree to. You start with keeping Denver pretty much whole in the 1st District. You keep El Paso County pretty much whole in the 5th. All parties agreed to that much.
But you also keep the West Slope together. You give Jefferson County and Aurora a little more respect than they’ve had in previous redistricting attempts. You try to give the Eastern Plains a reasonable role in the 4th. Yet all of that remains up in the air.
Instead, we got a map where the Democrats made some radical redrawings, in the name of competitiveness—for instance, pairing Boulder with Grand Junction. The Republicans couldn’t decide which set of maps to back. Balmer had his own maps, which we think would serve as a good starting point for a compromise, but at the last moment McNulty came in with new drawings, which Balmer said he had never seen and which McNulty couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain.
If you want some irony, all the Republican maps are based on the one Judge John Coughlin drew in 2002, to loud complaints from Republicans.
Now, as you might expect, both parties are accusing the other of trying to game the system. Redistricting is never easy. It’s the place where math, partisanship and human nature meet. You can expect a collision.
But we have the right, too, to expect the legislature to hammer out a plan. There is still enough time to get it done. What there must be, at this point, is sufficient will.
Or is too optimistic of us to ask for even that much?
Editorial:
