Essay: Minority Report - 4/9/07
Last November, the voters of his district elected Tim Walberg to Congress. Walberg, most agree, is far to the right of the average voter in this congressional district, which runs from Ann Arbor west through Jackson and on to Battle Creek.
Though this is a normally Republican district, it voted for Bill Clinton and always votes for Carl Levin. Last fall, Walberg spent millions, and barely managed to defeat an organic farmer who had little political experience and virtually no money.
Next year, Mark Schauer could have had the Democratic nomination for the asking. He would have had enough money available to make it a real race. What’s more, he would not have to give up his current job unless he won.
But Schauer, who has served in the Legislature for ten years, ruled running for Congress out. He says he promised his constituents and his colleagues he’d serve out his full four-year term when re-elected last fall, and he means to do just that.
That’s a highly unusual attitude in politics. Bill Clinton promised the same thing when elected governor of Arkansas in 1990, and once the election was over, immediately began running for president. Schauer says Michigan’s problems are too big for that.
He is certainly right about the problems. As he noted in a column in last Thursday’s Detroit Free Press, “Wall Street and businesses around the world are paying attention."
“The Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency recently described this legislative session as the most critical in a decade, and gave Michigan a negative credit outlook, which makes it more difficult and expensive for us to do business in the future.”
What Senator Schauer didn’t say was that unless we get our act together, S&P is likely to further downgrade our credit rating, making doing business harder still.
Schauer has been in Lansing longer than nearly anyone today, including either Gov. Granholm or Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop. He knows our leaders are staging a cat fight in a little boat that is about to be swept over the falls.
What is needed, he argues, is a big dose of what used to be called the “vision thing.” Yes, the state needs new revenue. But he also knows we need to make Michigan more hospitable to business.
“For Michigan to emerge strong from the current economic crisis, we need to modernize our tax structure so new investment can and will happen,“ Schauer says. We’d clearly be better off if both parties would listen to him. By the way, in less than four years Schauer will leave office and can never serve in the legislature again.
Thanks to our certifiably insane system of term limits, he’ll be replaced by someone who knows far less about how government works. No wonder Michigan is in such a mess.
Comments