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Jet for sale: New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez follows up on campaign promise to sell the state's $5.5 million Cessna aircraft

Natalie Gonnella

During her 2010 gubernatorial campaign, New Mexico's Susana Martinez vowed to sell the state jet and in her first month as governor she has wasted little time in following up on her promise.

In 2005, then Governor Bill Richardson bought the eight seat Cessna Citation Bravo for $5.5 million (according to New Meixico's News 13 the jet costs taxpayers almost $3,000 an hour to fly.) State officials throughout Richardson's Administration, including the former governor, have been accused of widespread abuse of the state's fleet of aircraft, which also includes two other planes.

Martinez noted her intentions to sell the jet during her State of the State Address, referring to the aircraft as the "ultimate symbol of waste and excess." In a recent interview with News 13, Martinez commented that she doesn't need to fly to do her job as governor:

I have a car desk in the back seat…I get lots of work [done] in the back seat. There's no need to be flying.

And it's not just the Governor who will be taking to the roads to get to meetings. Martinez has also called for an end to the regular use of flights by other state officials, adding that:

New Mexicans don't want to see their taxes go up so that someone can fly a plane like this just go to meetings

Congressman Darrell Issa targets the country's "pension pickle"

Natalie Gonnella

In an op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune today, House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa took aim at the country's public "pension pickle."

A key topic in many governors state of the state addresses, current estimates predict that more than 50% of state pensions will run out of resources by 2030, with some reaching their limits by the end of the decade.

In response, last December, Issa introduced the the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act, which aims to provide enhanced transparency for state and local pensions, [while] also [establishing] a clear federal prohibition on any future public pension bailouts by the federal government."

Here's a look at what Issa had to say today about the country's dire need for pension reform: 

By mandating new transparency rules, public pensions will be forced not only to disclose their current liabilities using a uniform accounting standard, but also their underlying methods and assumptions to project realistic rates of return and tie assets to reasonable fair market evaluations. Moreover, the reform plan links federal tax-exempt bonding authority to states and local governments with compliance to the law. In essence, no transparency will mean no money.

Ignoring the pension problem will only send states’ budgets on a faster downward spiral toward bankruptcy and increase the likelihood that federal taxpayers will get stuck with the bill for benefits that are not only unaffordable but also far more generous than those enjoyed by most workers in the private sector who ultimately pay for them.

Representatives Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes joined Issa in introducing the transparency act in 2010.

Calling for spending cuts and benefit reform during his "State of the State" address, Governor Chris Christie says "it's time to do the big things"

Natalie Gonnella

One of the first governors to deliver State of the State remarks in 2011, New Jersey's Chris Christie decided that this year, it was time to "break with tradition."

During his speech, rather than detail a lengthy list of 'to dos' focused on numerous departments, the Governor instead focused on three key areas, making the point that "its time to do the big things":

• Continuing fiscal discipline and enacting spending cuts
• Fixing pension and health benefit programs in order to save them
• Serious education reform

Detailing his approach to spending cuts and program reforms, Christie said:

I am not proposing to cut spending just for cutting's sake. I am fighting this fight because we have to be truthful about what we can't afford-whether it is health and pension benefits which are out of line with the rest of the country, or a tunnel which we can't pay for. I am asking for shared sacrifice so that when we leave here, New Jersey will be more fiscally sound than when we got here. I am asking for shared sacrifice in cutting what we don't need so that we can invest in what we absolutely do need.

Outlining his key focus for “simple, straightforward, and sensible” changes to benefit programs, Christie noted that in order to ensure New Jersey a stable future, lawmakers must:

• Modestly raise the retirement age in an era of longer life expectancy.
• Curb the effect of COLAs in a time of low or no inflation.
• Ensure a modest but acceptable contribution from employees toward their own retirement system
• If real reform [becomes a reality], the State must also begin to make its pension contributions

The Governor reminded residents that:

Nearly 75 percent — three out of every four dollars— of [New Jersey's] municipal and county budgets are driven by personnel and labor costs and "without reform, the problem...is simple: Benefits are too rich, and contributions are too small, and the system is on a path to bankruptcy.

Lastly, during his address, Governor Christie reiterated his views on education reform.  With the leaders of the states teachers' union as well as special guest Michelle Rhee in attendance, the Governor announced his commitment to eradicate teacher tenure, commenting that:

Teaching can no longer be the only profession where you have no rewards for excellence and no consequences for failure to perform. Let New Jersey lead the way again.  The time to eliminate teacher tenure is now.

Acknowledging that his proposed changes won't always be easy to digest in the short term, the Governor called on residents to embrace sacrifice and perseverance for the sake of New Jersey's longer term future, reminding them that "sometimes, to create real change, you've got to go all in and show a little Jersey attitude."

Where is the tea party on the state spending and budget fiasco?

Ryan Streeter

I’m glad George Will wrote his Sunday column on the state budget crisis. This looming problem should be the next frontier of the tea party’s rebellious fervor. With $3.3 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, states are in a bad place, and the worst offenders are leading us to another round of bailouts that will make the bank bailouts and wasteful stimulus spending seem like small ball.

Will spotlights Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) bill that would require greater transparency from states regarding their pension funds. States that can’t comply lose eligibility for federally backed bonds (bonds that states issue that are exempt from taxation).

The bill also states that the federal government will not bail out states. I think this is the most important provision. As we’ve seen in the financial crisis, banks’ implicit assumption that the federal government would bail them out affected their behavior (badly). States are no different.

The bill would go a long way to conditioning state behavior before things get completely out of control.

I would suggest adding an additional provision: prohibit states from using federally-backed bonds to fill holes in their budget that they should be using tax revenue to pay for.  A number of states have used bond issues to cover shortfalls in pensions, employee pay, and other areas that bonds just simply shouldn’t be used for.

Nunes should get some reinforcement from the new crop of Republicans in the House. If more Americans knew what kinds of behavior and decision-making are driving the state budget crisis, my guess is the tea party would enter a productive phase 2.

Why today's Census report is an even bigger deal for the GOP than the mid-terms

Ryan Streeter

The Census data released today is widely reported as good news for the Republican party - and it is. But in a way slightly different than most are reporting.

Most news reports of the Census’s reapportionment of congressional seats have focused on how the American population is moving south and west to red states, which is good for the GOP. Texas gained four seats, Florida gained two, and Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington all gained one.  Meanwhile, New York and Ohio each lost two seats, and Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all lost one.

This is indeed a good news story for the GOP politically, but it’s an even more important policy story for the GOP. People generally do not move from one state to another because they prefer the politics of the party in power, and climate alone can’t explain the western and southern trajectory of U.S. migration. California, after all, has been losing population (though it was spared a lost seat, a possibility many had been predicting). Movement is not random and without explanation, however.

People and businesses head to places that have a good quality of life, reasonable cost of living, the prospect of upward mobility, and the best chance of growing new enterprises. The states that have gained the most seats are the ones that, in general, have the best policy environments: favorable taxes, lower costs of doing business, good infrastructure, and less expensive public sectors.

On November 2, American voted overwhelmingly for Washington to spend less and get its house in order. But for the past ten years, Americans have been voting with their feet for a broader policy portfolio of lower taxes, good government, and pro-enterprise rules and regulations that Republicans typically advocate. One can argue that the 2010 mid-terms delivered a fairly straightforward, singular message about spending. The Census report, on the other hand, reflects a collective vote by Americans for pro-growth policies that are good for families and businesses.

In the Enterprising States report produced this year by the Praxis Strategy Group for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Florida, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Georgia, and Washington are all in the report’s list of the top ten infrastructure performers. The only state to lose a congressional seat in the top ten is Illinois. In fact, in the reports multiple ranking sets by growth, taxation, innovation, and so on, the states that lost congressional seats today are largely absent.

Or when we look at Beacon Hill’s 2010 State Competitiveness Index, Florida and Nevada top the rankings for sound government and fiscal policy, while New Jersey ranks last, New York 46th, and Pennsylvania 44th. In fact, the states gaining seats trend toward the top 20 states in this ranking, and the states losing seats trend toward the bottom 20 states.

By almost any index or metric, the results are clear. Americans do not like living in places with high taxes, dysfunctional and expensive public sectors, and low or negative growth. Being in or close to exciting urban centers or wine regions is not enough of a magnet to keep families and businesses in the neighborhood.  People are looking for “opportunity environments” more than anything the left thinks of as appealing. 

The Democratic party has virtually no narrative to help it reverse this trend. Its green left wing and its public sector patrons make it almost impossible for the party to talk coherently and persuasively about growth and opportunity. Republicans, on the other hand, have virtually no internal conflict with promoting the lessons contained in the 2010 Census.

Republicans have a history of looking to the states as “laboratories of democracy” to inform federal policymaking. No time is better than now for Republicans to build upon what the states are teaching us about tax policy, regulatory policy, human capital formation, and infrastructure investment. If the GOP succeeds on this front, it could be another good ten years.

Let's get serious about the states-as-laboratories-of-democracy idea again

Ryan Streeter

We conservatives used to talk a lot about how reform bubbled up from states and localities. We would cite Wisconsin’s heroic welfare reform leadership in the 1990s, which was also the Decade of the Mayor with reformers Rudy Giuliani, Steve Goldsmith, and others leading the way at the municipal level.

But since then, there hasn’t been much interesting state-level innovation to provide policy roadmaps for Washington – until now. This is for two reasons: state finances are a politically-created mess, and the recent election affirmed the direction reformist governors were already going.

It's time to start paying attention to what the nation can learn from its leading states.

As Dan Balz writes in today’s Washington Post, Republicans picked up 675 seats in state legislatures on November 2, the biggest gain since 1938. They’ve gone from controlling 14 legislatures to 26, while Democrats dropped from 27 to 17. Alabama went Republican for the first time since Reconstruction.

The gains are astounding. They also make a lot of sense, given where we are as a country. State finances are a wreck and could be the next big fiscal crisis in America. The “mad as hell” animus behind voter turn-out this year wasn’t just about Washington. It was about states, and given what what Michael Gerson recently called the “teetering finances of blue America,” it hit Democratically-controlled states especially hard. The nation is hungry for reform not just in Washington, but in states that have, well, gone statist themselves. 

Voters want what reformist governors are doing. If we could gather the three leading gubernatorial innovators together to build one big laboratory of democracy to spin off ideas for the nation, these would top my list:

Chris Christie (NJ) and the fight against special interests – we need to confront the built-in waste and economic drag of entrenched interests, from their effect on bloated public payrolls to needless spending to earmarks. He’s gaining a lot of national attention for his combative approach to entrenched interests, and the joy he seems to get from it is contagious. Now it's time to figure out how to do this nationally.

Mitch Daniels (IN) and the politics of fiscal innovation – before it was sexy to talk of austerity as a virtue, “Mitch,” as he is known to everyone in Indiana, was putting pennies on the tires of government vehicles to see which were not being driven so he could sell them. He has shown that finances can be brought under control in difficult times through competitive outsourcing and cutting spending, and that enterprise and investment respond favorably.

Rick Perry (TX) and growth-based governance – he has presided over a booming economy by making Texas a low-tax, business-friendly destination for people from everywhere, spawning regular comparisons with California, which is driving people away (a lot to Texas). Texas's record alone in job creation recommends Perry for the list.

An honorable mention goes to Bobby Jindal (LA), who - the regular critique of being untested notwithstanding - has a firm grasp on healthcare reform policy and is articulate on education reform in a state that is notoriously low-performing. He performed well in the gulf oil spill, though I'm not sure I'd like to read his new book about this as I would like to hear him continue to advocate the policies we need.

We have a habit of hoping we can send people to Washington to fix our problems. But Washington itself is a hollow arsenal when it comes to the tools of reform. It's time to re-start an energetic debate about what our states are teaching America as a whole.