A Town Hall for Sen. Enzi

Loss of hearing is a sign of aging. Likewise, one sign a politician has been there too long is loss of listening. It’s easy when you win elections with 70% of the vote. How much can the opinions of those other actually 30% matter? Why consider the 55% who don’t bother to register to vote?

Senator Mike Enzi told the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, “Most people aren’t interested in what I’m saying.” He thinks they just want to “deliver their message.” Actually, Senator, it’s both. Many want to let you know how they feel while asking you to explain yourself.

For example, at a town hall, you could explain how Republicans spent years trying to repeal Obamacare but had no replacement. What does the Chairman of the Budget Committee think of Trump’s budget-busting $21 billion wall and $54 billion increase in military spending?

You could hear the angst about Trump’s murky relationship with Russia among those who don’t worship the Republican brand. You voted to convict Bill Clinton for lying about marital infidelity but ignore the national security implications of Jeff Sessions’ and Michael Flynn’s perjury and Trump’s delusional Tweets.

At town hall meetings, you’d be asked why you know better than the majority of Americans who think Trump should release his income tax returns. Why do you oppose term limits while 77% of Wyoming voters supported them in a statewide election with polls showing stronger support today? Why did you vote to allow seriously mentally ill people to buy guns?

Think about it. It’s understandable that voters attending your colleagues’ town hall meetings chant, “Do your job.”

Senator Enzi assures those asking him to hold town hall meetings that he doesn’t need public gatherings in order to get the information he needs to do his job. He says he speaks “with a lot of people in different parts of the state” when home on weekends and during congressional recesses. He says that in the past he has held what he calls “listening sessions” and “will consider some in the future.”

He holds telephone conference calls and meets “with people and groups almost daily both in Wyoming and with Wyoming folks who come to Washington.” He assures constituents that town hall meetings are not necessary. They can contact his office or send an email.

To a naïve voter or true-Red supporters, that may seem sufficient. It may even sound as though he’s actually listening. It is, however, an admission that he’s been there too long and has grown too comfortable building walls between him and those who have opinions differing from his conservative base.

Are the encounters he describes reasonable substitutes for face-to-face town hall meetings? Most of the alternatives place a staff person between him and the constituent. You call or email and who gets the message? Who drafts the response? Meetings with special interest groups, whether in Wyoming or Washington, are a poor substitute for listening to real people.

Saying you’re listening is different from actually hearing. Politicians who’ve been in office too long can easily deceive themselves into believing that they are hearing when they are not. A town hall meeting would relieve Mike Enzi of that burden. A town hall meeting is where Mr. Enzi will encounter folks the Senator doesn’t hear from in the normal course of his meanderings. A town hall meeting is where the Senator will see the faces and hear the voices of those who are afraid or angry and he’ll feel their raw, unrehearsed emotion in a way that can never be conveyed by an email or a phone call answered by a member of his staff.

During a town hall meeting, Mr. Enzi will be reminded that the sum total of all of his GOP supporters and the special interest groups that fawn over him does not equal the public’s interest in what he does.

The President claims people who come to town hall meetings are paid to do so. They are not, but Senator Enzi, you are.

The GOP Internet Tax

Senator Mike Enzi has proposed legislation to raise taxes by 24 billion dollars. His proposal has an appealing name. “The Marketplace Fairness Act” imposes sales taxes on those who make Internet purchases. Today you don’t pay sales tax when you buy through the Internet. If Enzi succeeds, the price you pay for Internet purchases will increase by 6%.

I am not getting into the debate over whether this is a good idea. Going there avoids the discussion of what happened to the “no tax” pledge most Republicans including Senator Enzi took? That pledge tied Congress in knots for the last several years each time an effort was made to find a balanced way to reduce the deficit.

Enzi’s record and that of fellow Republicans has, until now, been consistent. Grover Norqusit, they believed, had it right. President Obama was wrong. On every vote to eliminate the old Bush tax breaks for the wealthy, Republicans blocked the road. Whether it was giving the rich greater exemptions from estate taxes, returning the income tax rates to Clinton-era levels, or avoiding severe budget cuts for the military by repealing the capital gains tax cuts, they have been a united voice for “NO.”

But now they have found a tax they like. But why is this tax good when all the others were, according to Republicans, disastrous for the economy? Curiously, there are also a lot of lobbyists and corporations that uncharacteristically have found a tax they like. Those big corporations know where to go when they want to gain a competitive advantage. They go to Congress. And that is what the “Marketplace Fairness Act” is about.

Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform as well as the Heritage Foundation continue to believe what GOP members of Congress used to believe. If it walks like a tax and quacks like a tax, it must be a tax. Enzi and other “no new tax” Republicans claim it is not a tax increase at all. They say it only allows states to collect taxes already due. That argument begs the fact that we don’t pay it now but after it passes, we’ll pay billions in additional taxes. Isn’t that the definition of a new tax?

Local businesses have opposed other new taxes but consider this one uniquely fair. But most of the tax reform ideas Enzi and others have spent years opposing are also fair. Unfortunately fairness is rather subjective and generally means someone else has to pay it. Fairness ultimately lies in the eyes of enough senators willing to filibuster a vote. There may be good reasons to impose the new tax but let’s be honest. That is exactly what it is and it’s a regressive one at that. Unlike most tax reform proposals that these members of Congress have opposed which fall on the wealthy, this one falls more heavily on the middle class.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, (R-NH) said, “What does surprise me is that there are people who describe themselves as conservatives who are going to support this act, when regardless of how you look at it, whether your state has a sales tax or not, it’s going to put some fairly rigorous and onerous requirements on online businesses to collect taxes for other states. That’s counter to conservative principles.”

Ayotte’s colleague Senator Roy Blunt (R-M) feels differently. In a New York Times report, he said it’s not fair that local folks purchase online and avoid a tax they’d have to pay if they bought from the fellow down the street. “They (those who will pay the new tax) use the parking lot. They use the sidewalk. They benefit from police protection, and then the local merchant who pays for all of that doesn’t get the sale.”

They also use all other services federal taxes purchase as well. Apply their logic for supporting this tax to other tax reform proposals and America would have the revenue it needs to reduce the deficit while investing in education, healthcare and infrastructure.