Platform - Fiscal Issues

The Restoration of Fiscal Solvency and Budgetary Sanity
The Current Condition:
The Solutions of the Independence Party:

• Decrease Federal and State Budget Deficits to Zero In Five Years:
• Improve the Fairness and Quality of The Budgetary Process:
• Improve the Quality of Service of the Government

We cannot recount all of the fiscal and budgetary abuses in this short document. The abuses are available in more than two dozen books that have been written about this behavior during the past five years alone. What we can say is that these abuses are the direct product of agreements between the leadership of both political parties. At the federal level, the leaders of the two parties have produced three massive tax increases in less than a decade, 1986, 1990, and 1993; and in all three instances they have done little or nothing to control spending or to alter the forces that are driving spending upward. The Republicans pretend to believe in fiscal conservatism, but they have been directly supportive of all but the last agreement. Under the direct leadership of both parties, the rise in federal spending continues unabated and untouched by the actions af Congress or the President.

In New York State the problem is even worse. The Republicans have controlled the state Senate and the Democrats the Assembly for nearly three decades. During that time, particularly since 1980, state spending has risen at an average of two to three times the inflation index. The continuation of this practice for another ten years will prove catastrophic for the state. Again, the Republican leadership pretends to fiscal conservatism, but this spending increase could not have occurred without their explicit agreement through their control of the state Senate.

During the whole time, both parties have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in propaganda to persuade Americans and New Yorkers that they are fiscally prudent and responible. The incumbents of both parties routinely return to their home districts and pretend that they bear no responsibility for institutions that no longer function to serve the public will.

The facts are today not even in serious dispute: (1) Spending remains out of control at the state and federal level; (2) Both major parties contribute to the problem because of their need to pay off interests that support their candidates; (3) Both parties contribute to hiding the problem from the public through the use of phony budgets, gimmicks such as off-line budgeting, the deliberate understatement of long-term liabilities, and mandates to transfer the cost either to other units of government, to the private sector through regulations and requirements, or to the future.

The time is long since past that a responsible person can believe that either party will step forward with real solutions to these problems. These incumbents will not bite the hands that feed money into their elections through the corruption of the PAC system and the soft money transfer through the national and state committees of the two parties.

The Solutions of the Independence Party:

1. Continued deficit spending and underfunding of obligations are unacceptable.
2. Federal, state, and local governmental budgets should be subject to the same accounting principles and processes imposed wisely on private corporations and organizations.
3. Our policy should call for the reduction of the deficit to zero before the end of the decade, and it should include a gradual paydown of all long-term obligations.
4. All long-term obligations must be funded with current dollars, applying accepted actuarial figures to every public pension program and other long-term obligations under the authority and guidance of an independent accounting firm.
5. Wherever possible, we prefer to minimize the role of the government, transferring needed activities into the private sector through privatization.
6. When a government program transfers income to individuals, we prefer to minimize the size and scope of administratve and bureaucratic involvement, making such transfer payments directly without excessive interference in the lives of recipients.

We believe that the time has arrived for government at all levels to concentrate more on improving the quality of services they provide rather than throwing more money at services that are not performing well. While we as a party do not follow the rather mindless cant of some Republicans who decry all government; we equally reject the bureaucratic liberals in the Democratic Party who with similar mindlessness propose monstrous new program after new program as a cure for all of our problems, even as they fail to make the existing programs work. In this light, the solutions of the Independence Party of New York include the following:

Decrease Federal and State Budget Deficits to Zero in Five Years:

1. Federal Deficit Plank: A five year plan to reduce the federal deficit to zero that emphasizes exclusively spending cuts since federal taxes have already been raised twice in l990 and 1993 with no real spending cuts.
2. Automatic Cost of Living (COLA) adjustments: An end to the use of automatic (without legislative vote) cost of living adjustments for all government programs. (Periodic cost of living adjustments will obviously be necessary from time to time, but legislatures should be forced to vote on these increases).
3. National Debt Referendum Plank: Require a national referendum on the increase of the federal debt level except where approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and signed by the President.
4. Restraint in Growth of Government Plank: Call for a five year program of holding the rate of increase in state and federal spending to at least one percent under the rate of inflation for five years.
5. Full Funding Plank: Support an end to the deliberate unfunding and underfunding of long-term liabilities such as government employee pensions. Require that expenses and obligations be fully paid in the year in which the obligation occurs.
6. State Deficit Plan: Call for a five year plan to eliminate the growing state budget deficit, demanding that the budget be current with all long-term liabilities and obligations.
7. Anti-Mandate Plank: Require an end to all mandates which transfer revenue obligations to other units of government without the approval of the other governments or the citizens they represent.
8. Sunset Provision: Require a five year sunset provision for every budget item, both at the state and federal level, whereby the program must be fully reconstituted through the legislative process.
9. Balanced Budget Amendment: Support a constitutional amendment to provide for a balanced federal budget.
10. Full Taxation of Subsidies: All subsidies and transfer payments of any kind that go directly to corporations and individuals should be taxed at the prevailing rate for the corporation or taxpayer.

1. Full and Fair Accounting Plank: Support the use of generally recognized accounting standards and procedures by federal, state, and local governments, including: (1) the use of the accrual method of accounting; (2) the inclusion of a balance sheet with a full expression of all assets and obligations; (3) the creation of public audit committees; (4) the requirement of an annual outside audit by an independent auditing firm; (5) an end to the use of off-line budgetng; (6) the requirement for independent actuarial evaluations of all long-term program obligations; (7) the adoption of a single set of accounting procedures and standards; and (8) quarterly interim reports on the budget.
2. Secure Trust Fund Status for Social Security: An end to the practice of financing current debt by taking excess Social Security contributions and replacing them with government IOUs.
3. Two Year Budget Cycle: Require that all government budgeting replace the current one year budgets with two year budgets, requiring public referenda on these budgets.
4. Citizen Approval of Employment Contracts: Provide public referenda on all state and local public employment contracts.
5. Taxpayer Advocacy Plank: Create an independent Taxpayer Budget Office under the authority of the Controller, whose legislative function is to prepare the best possible case against every public expenditure and every increase in public expenditures, and which is required to make representations before legislative commitees on behalf of the taxpayer.
6. Timely Budgets: Both the state and federal governments should be required to submit final budgets within timely schedules, with fines for the legislators if they fail to meet deadlines.

1. Fair Dismissal Plank: Continue Civil Service requirements for the hiring and promotion of public employees, but alter the Civil Service requirements to ease dramatically the restrictions (and exorbitant cost) of the ability of the government to discharge employees for cause.
2. Privatization Plank: Support an aggressive program of privatizing government functions wherever and whenever possible.
3. Quality Measurement Plank: Require measurement of the quality of the delivery of all public services by those who use those public services on at least an annual basis, with full disclosure of the results.
4. Line Item Veto: Extend the line item veto to the Governor and the President.
5. Citizen Legislator Plank: Support the concept that all legislative offices other than Congress and the U.S. Senate should be part-time positions that can easily be held by most citizens, and we support the reorganization of the legislative sessions in New York toward that end.
6. Uniform Application of Laws Plank: Support a measure requiring that members of Congress and the state legislatures be subject to the same laws that are applicable to others, including laws about discriminaton, pension reform, and the like.

© 1996 by the Independence Party of New York State.
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