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POLICY BRIEF FROM AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM
The NGA Should Pay its own Way
by Peter J. Ferrara
EXTRA: What Conservatives
& Free Market Leaders Say About the NGA
The National Governor’s Association
(NGA) is a national lobbying organization for the states. Its members
are the incumbent state governors from across the country. It lobbies
Congress and the president for legislation favorable to state governments.
You may not know much about the NGA,
but you should. You’re paying for it.
This year, taxpayers across the country
will be required to pay at least $8.1 million to fund the NGA. That
figure includes $4.2 million paid by the state governments as "dues"
and $3.9 million from federal grants and contracts. The total budget
of the NGA is $13.2 million. So taxpayers finance about two-thirds of
the organization.
What do taxpayers get for this money?
Another liberal lobbying group. The chairmanship of the NGA rotates
every year between a Republican and a Democrat governor, regardless
of which party has the most governors. As a result, no chairman is in
control long enough to really change the organization.
That leaves daily control in the hands
of the NGA staff, which is composed primarily of typical Washington
liberals. They tend to be former congressional staffers, mostly from
Democrat offices. Their view of what is good for the states is a bigger
federal government.
The staff pushes higher government
spending for the states and state-administered entitlement programs,
including welfare programs. It fights against federal tax cuts, because
it wants more money for the states. In the past, it opposed the federal
balanced budget amendment out of fear that federal funding to the states
might be cut to balance the budget. Recently, to justify its existence,
it bragged that it lobbied successfully for higher federal highway spending
and to stop restrictions on the runaway growth of Medicaid.
During the early 1980s the NGA was
used as a base to fight against President Reagan’s welfare reforms.
Robert Carleson, Reagan’s senior welfare advisor in the White House
and before that in California, says "the NGA used the liberal Republican
heading it at the time, Richard Snelling of Vermont, to sabotage Reagan’s
efforts to devolve welfare to the states."
More recently, the NGA and its liberal
staff have sought to undermine the welfare legislation passed last year.
The staff developed a resolution calling on Congress to restore food
stamps and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits to legal immigrants.
Yet, those benefits have been drawing immigrants from around the world,
particularly those who are elderly and retired, to live off the U.S.
taxpayers. About 350,000 elderly immigrants receive SSI, accounting
for about 15 percent of the entire SSI caseload.
This resolution was defeated by the
majority of Republican governors in the NGA. But a final resolution
called for new benefits for these groups. Another staff-developed resolution
sought to weaken the work requirements in the reform bill, by counting
as work "job readiness" activities, high school equivalency
courses and even drug and alcohol treatment.
Liberal foundations think the work
of the NGA is highly valuable to their cause, because most of the rest
of the NGA’s budget is financed by them. The Joyce, Casey, Kaiser,
Mott and Carnegie foundations have all given money to the NGA.
Finally, at least one governor has
stood up and said, enough. Last week, Gov. Fob James of Alabama announced
that he was pulling out of the NGA.
The governor’s decision was quite
practical. Alabama’s taxpayers have to pay $100,000 each year in
dues to the NGA. Yet, the governor says, the state gets nothing for
it. The NGA sends the states policy papers and briefs that nobody reads,
and that included the same information the states get elsewhere. To
represent Alabama’s interests in Congress the state already has
a full congressional delegation, the governor notes. If the governor
wants information from another state, he or his staff can simply call
the state directly.
So, the governor decided to save his
taxpayers $100,000 per year. "In taking the lead on this issue"
says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, "Gov.
James has established himself as a first-rate taxpayers’ hero."
Norquist urges other governors to follow James’ lead, and others
may do so.
Taxpayer funding for the NGA is indefensible.
Taxpayers should not be forced to finance liberals fighting for more
big government. Most states, in fact, already keep an office in Washington
to look out for their interests, in addition to the state’s congressional
delegation. Governors should stop taking their taxpayers’ money
as well to finance the NGA and its liberal staff. The federal government
also must stop financing numerous liberal lobbying groups like the NGA
with the money of hard-working taxpayers who often oppose what these
liberal groups do. The NGA and other liberal groups must raise their
money voluntarily just as organizations that support conservative causes
do.
What Conservative and Free
Market Leaders Say About the NGA
"The NGA should have to raise
its own money voluntarily from the general public, like we do. As Jefferson
said, forcing people to pay for the advancement of views they do not
agree with is tyrannical."
Ed Crane
President, Cato Institute
"Lobbying groups and think tanks
should not be financed through taxpayer funds. It is unfair for me to
have to raise money voluntarily to counter the views of others who are
taking their money form the public by force."
David G. Tuerck
Beacon Hill Institute, Boston, Mass.
"At a time when states are aggressively
cutting taxes and downsizing their state governments, it certainly seems
to make sense to save money by withholding payments to the National
Governor’s Association. Most of the truly important tasks of the
NGA can be handled well by the Republican Governor’s Association."
Stephen Moore
Director of Fiscal Policy Studies, Cato Institute
"It’s time to end federal
taxpayer support for a trade association that has long been a tired,
predictable voice for an expanded government."
Mike Horowitz
Hudson Institute
General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget (1981-85)
"The NGA operates outside any
standards of accountability and openness. Taxpayers’ funds paid
by the states in dues to the NGA become akin to private funds, exempt
from the requirements of open government statutes in the various states."
Peter Flaherty
President, National Legal and Policy Center
"The NGA has every constitutional
right to politic, but it doesn’t have a right, constitutional or
otherwise, to do so on the taxpayers’ dime."
Jim Martin
President, 60 Plus Association
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