Folks of curious motivation have now qualified for the general election ballot a proposed constitutional amendment by which we would take the sales tax off food and over-the-counter medicine.
Jackson T. "Steve" Stephens Jr., the privileged son who espouses archconservative and anti-government views, has donated to the effort. He has been quoted as saying the proposal will smoke out liberals by forcing them to reveal whether they really care about poor people or if they only care about government.
You see, the idea of removing the sales tax from groceries and medicines has long been a liberal notion. That's because the sales tax is regressive in that it burdens poor people disproportionately, especially when applied to necessities. But liberals have always coupled discussions of its repeal with progressive notions about replacing the money by shifting the tax responsibility to the wealthy.
So, here come libertarian types, almost with tongues in cheeks, to co-opt the idea. They champion repeal without replacement and do so not from ideological concern over regressive taxation, but out of contempt for government. They seek not so much to remove an unfair burden from poor people as to forcibly reduce government. For good measure, and mischief, they want to chuckle about making liberals squirm.
But liberals -- and others interested in fairness and instructed in the benefit of government services -- see this as a false choice. They believe they can help poor people by taking the sales tax off food and that they can do so without threatening vital government services for the poor like Medicaid.
What they'd like to do is take the sales tax off food and medicine while concurrently raising taxes on privileged sons like Steve Stephens.
Without replacing the money, state government and cities and counties would lose about a half billion dollars a year, a cut so deep and wide that services from trash pickup to health services to public education would be imperiled.
Now, permit me an easy prediction: The voters of Arkansas would approve this amendment by 70-30 or more.
That means those interested in preserving government services face two choices.
They can encourage the next Legislature to raise taxes to offset the loss. But the Legislature already faces pressure to raise taxes to meet the mandate of pending court rulings about public education.
Or they can do what they've done successfully in recent years in response to destructive ballot issues. They can go to court to try to get the proposals thrown off the ballot.
They've opted to sue.
Sherry Walker, a political consultant trained in these kinds of efforts, represents a group including cities and counties, the Farm Bureau, the state Chamber of Commerce, libraries, police agencies and so forth.
She says the proposal's legal flaw is that it is "deceptively simple." In an attempt to streamline the application of their proposal, the advocates have defined food as anything covered by food stamps and medicine as anything covered by a federal government subsidy. Walker says voters will have no idea from those definitions what specific items are affected, and that, as a result, they are being asked to cast an uninformed vote.
I am thoroughly uninspired. More compelling, though, is another argument.
In 1994 the voters overwhelmingly approved a soft-drink tax to bail out Medicaid, raising $40 million to be matched 3-to-1 by the federal government to raise about $120 million for health care. This amendment apparently would remove that excise tax on soft drinks. In other words, the voters would be invited in this amendment to take an action that, without informing them, would remove a tax they overwhelmingly approved not a decade ago.
That's a pretty good point. Let the biennial lawyering begin.
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: John Brummett is a columnist and reporter for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.)
