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The Arizona Model:
Five Questions for Former AZ Speaker Kirk Adams
by Lachlan Markay
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis described the states as
“laboratories for democracy.” Policies enacted at the state level can
offer insight into their likely efficacy on the federal level.
Kirk Adams, the former Republican speaker of the Arizona House of
Representatives, has authored legislation that pulled the state’s
budget from billions in shortfalls into the black. He led the way in
reforming the pension system for state employees — beginning with
himself: he voluntarily opted out of the system in a symbolic gesture
for reform. Adams was also instrumental in the passage of landmark
immigration enforcement legislation.
Adams sat down with Scribe for an exclusive interview, in which he
conservative reforms in his state, the need to secure the southern
border, and the proper role of compromise in the electoral process,
among other issues.
Heritage will host Adams for a discussion of the upcoming oral
arguments at the Supreme Court in the Justice Department’s lawsuit
against Arizona over landmark immigration legislation passed during his
tenure as Speaker.
What do you consider to be your top accomplishments as speaker?
It’s really three things. We reduced state spending by $3.4 billion, a
30% reduction. When I became speaker in January 2009, I ran against the
incumbent speaker, a Republican, beat him, and we had a $3.4 billion
deficit. Today we have a $700 million surplus. I authored and passed
the largest tax cut in state history. We’re now adding jobs. We added
45,000 jobs in Arizona last year, the first job growth we’ve seen in
five years.
Now you contrast those two things with the Democratic model in
California, just to the west of Arizona. When we came in with this
deficit, California was at 30% deficit-to-revenues. We were at 29% —
virtually equal. Today, we have a surplus, we’re adding jobs, we passed
a tax cut. California, on the other hand, still has billions of dollars
in deficits, they’re bleeding businesses — we’re picking up a lot of
California businesses because we lowered our taxes to be even more
competitive. And I think when you look at the tale of two states like
that, you see a conservative model, and you see a liberal model, and
you can see the difference in the two.
And the third thing, I would say, is I took on public pension reform as
well. And in Arizona, where I wrote that bill, we included all public
sector employees, including police and fire, including elected
officials. The pension system that was most beneficial for its
recipients was the elected officials’ pension system — the classic “fox
guarding the henhouse.” So we eliminated early retirement, which was
after only five years, for elected officials.
I voluntarily opted out of the state pension system. I served in the
state legislature for five years. After five years, I could have begun
to collect a state pension on the taxpayers’ dime. Over the course of
my expected lifetime, it would have been $250,000 that I gave up
voluntarily. And I did that to set the example that we need to fix this
pension system. And I also did it because when I ran for office I
didn’t know there was such thing as a pension system for elected
officials.
We hear a lot of talk about gridlock in Washington these days. You led
the charge for landmark conservative reforms. Did that require you to
reach across the aisle, or was opposition too entrenched?
I’ll be honest, when you’re talking about cutting government spending
and cutting taxes and taking on government unions, you don’t have an
opportunity to build bridges with Democrats. You just have to beat
them, and that’s what we did. Compromise is something that has a role
in the political process, obviously, but not if it’s not moving you
towards real solutions.
I’ll give you an example. Arizona was in fiscal free-fall. When we got
into this in January 2009, there were a lot of doubts about whether we
could ever get out of it. Our deficit — $3.4 billion with
eight-and-a-half billion in revenue — that just seemed insurmountable.
Nobody thought we had the political will to cut $3.4 billion. Well, we
found a way to do it.
But, in that process, during the worst fiscal crisis in state history,
in the midst of the worst national economic crisis since the great
depression, the Democrats in the Arizona state legislature not one time
voted to cut a single penny of spending. So you can’t compromise with
that position.
Same thing on the tax cut. We actually lowered the corporate income tax
rate by 35% — in a recession. When I introduced that bill, I was told
“you can’t cut business taxes in a recession.” So I traveled the state
talking about how economics works. Nobody gets a job until somebody
first has capital to invest. Capital goes where capital is welcome.
When you have confiscatory tax rates, capital is going to go elsewhere.
That’s a law of nature. That’s a law of economics. You can’t suspend
those laws.
What are the stakes of this debate, in Arizona and elsewhere?
You hear this a lot, but I think the country is at a true crossroads. I
think we have four to six years to start turning the corner, otherwise
we reach a point of no return, both socially and politically.
You’re not going to fix the problems at the federal level in three
years. Maybe it takes five, maybe it takes 10, but the point is you
have to start changing the trajectory. If our debt accumulation keeps
going up like this, we have no hope. If we flatten that curve out, year
three, year four, seven, eight, if that thing starts trending down,
then we have real hope and we have a brighter future.
You were also instrumental in the passage of the Arizona immigration
law commonly known as SB1070. That earned Arizona the ire of the Obama
Justice Department. What do you make of their intense opposition to the
law?
There were two key moments, I thought, that were the most revealing.
The president said that this would allow police officers to arrest
people — families — on their way to get an ice cream cone, a blatant
disregard for the truth. It created an image of SB1070 that was nothing
like the bill itself. The second moment was when Attorney General Eric
Holder said he hadn’t even read the bill. It’s an 11-page bill. He’s
the attorney general of the United States. This is not the health care
bill. It’s an 11-page bill. …
The regret that I have with 1070 is that we did not anticipate the
media firestorm that would be created from it. It was like the Super
Bowl. I mean, I could walk out of my office and speak to Anderson
Cooper and Larry King and the Fox guys and the MSNBC guys. They were
camped out on our lawns. We just didn’t anticipate the symbol that it
became, and therefore there was about a week lag where we were outdone
in explaining the true nature of SB1070.
All that being said, I think it’s also important to note that SB1070
hasn’t solved the problem. And in that sense, even some of its most
enthusiastic supporters have oversold the measure. The truth is we will
never get a handle on this problem in Arizona or anywhere in the
country unless the federal government genuinely secures the southern
border. To me, that’s the lynchpin. Everything else that you want to
debate about that happens after that.
The controversy over Operation Fast and Furious is, of course, an
important issue for Arizona. Are you satisfied with Congress’s
investigative efforts? With the Justice Department’s cooperation in the
investigation?
I think Congressman [Darrell] Issa is trying to get to the bottom of a
lot of this, and I know that the Arizona delegation, in particular the
Arizona House delegation, has been strong in trying to get answers on
this. But no, the DOJ has not been forthcoming.
This is something that infuriates Arizonans. We know these border
patrol agents. They live and they work in our state. They’re part of
our communities. And to have the federal government providing weapons
to professional drug and human smuggling cartels that are used against
our people is infuriating. And it’s just another indication, we think,
of a federal government that has never been really serious about what
has to be done in the border region.
Source: blog.heritage.org
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