Bill O'Brien: Return of the Political Cicadas

POLITICS resembles nature. Electoral competition for votes, for example, mirrors competition in nature for resources, resulting in the “survival of the fittest.” And concerted action through political parties to achieve success seems at times to mirror the herding instincts we see in nature.

One exceptionally reliable analog in nature to New Hampshire politics is the mass emergence in the wild of what scientists refer to as Periodical Cicadas. Quite reliably, overwhelming numbers of these swarming cicadas emerge in remarkably regular cycles, generally every 13 to 17 years. Then they strip trees and, left unchecked, can devastate our yards and forests.

The political equivalent of the Periodical Cicadas is the emergence of tax-and-spend Democratic gubernatorial and legislative candidates. Just as the uncontrolled feeding of the Periodical Cicadas will strip trees of all vegetation, the uncontrolled spending of the periodically appearing tax and spend Democrats will strip New Hampshire of all prosperity.

You might think this analogy is too harsh and ungenerous, but consider the similarity in time and effect.

Just over 17 years ago, and for the first time in decades, Democrats took control of both the New House and Senate. They held this control with a Democrat governor until 14 years ago, and theirs was a time of state budgetary malpractice. In just four years, the Democrats taxed and spent a state that had always balanced budgets into almost a billion-dollar structural deficit.

Their stripping of our state’s finances used all the tricks in the book of budgetary gimmicks and over taxation they learned from Massachusetts.

They used one-time federal money to fund permanent increases in spending. They borrowed to pay current expenses. They enacted a business-suppressing array of new and increased taxes, 104 in a few short years to be exact.

Just as Massachusetts will sell state assets between state agencies to invent revenue, the swarming Democrats of 14 to 17 years ago used a similar accounting stunt. They sold part of Interstate 95 to the Turnpike Authority for millions of dollars.

And the Democrats spent. Boy, did they spend.

They spent so much that even with the 104 new and increased taxes, when a Republican majority was elected to the Legislature to fix the problem, New Hampshire faced a spending baseline that exceeded revenues by roughly $900 million.

Because the Democrats know only one thing when it comes to government budgets, when Republicans set about repairing that damage, Democrats insisted that the only way to repair it - their billion–dollar structural deficit - was a broad-based tax.

Instead, New Hampshire Republicans, with the counsel of independent voters and voices from all parts of New Hampshire, went through the painful process - painful for the state and personally painful to many of us - of adjusting state government spending from $11.6 billion down to $10.5 billion, a reduction necessary to cover the deficit and the loss of about $300 million in federal stimulus money.

Over the years since, hard-working Granite Staters have kept more of their wages because of the fiscal responsibility Republicans brought to Concord when the control of state government was taken from the swarming Democratic tax and spenders. Even today, these savings have remained with taxpayers in the latest fiscally responsible, tax-reducing, job-creating budget signed by Gov. Chris Sununu.

Another 14 years have passed and we have a new emergence of swarming Democrats. They want to re-enact an income tax on savings. They want to repeal the education tax credit for businesses used to fund low and moderate-income New Hampshire families so they can choose the best schools for their children. The collective confusion - or cluelessness - of these swarming politicians is apparent as they publicly argue that we like taxes and want more.

Our choice for this election is clear. Do we offer up the corner office and legislative control to the Democrats so they can strip us bare, or do we recognize that periodically out of our southern neighbor, the political cicadas emerge and that we need to send them back into the political wilderness for another 14 to 17 years?  How else could we remain one of the nation’s best run states?

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Bill O’Brien served as Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives after Republicans took control of the Legislature in 2010.  He lives in Manchester.