Prudent Actions, Not Pyrotechnics

A year ago when legislatures convened, their new Republican leaders looked admiringly to the radicals in Congress for political inspiration. This year as legislatures convene, Capitol Hill is a political disaster area and the states are still waiting for Congress fully to answer crucial questions. For example: How much federal money will states receive to run numerous programs? And how will Congress change the rules that govern those programs?

The chaos in Congress, and the growing public disgust toward it, ought to provoke second thoughts in this election year if any state legislators feel tempted to tie their own capitols in knots.

The federal wrangling also creates big unknowns as states try to keep budgets in balance. These unknowns should make them careful.

But the coming election could make them foolish. The cry for lower taxes rings loudly in politicians’ ears. Yet the cost of lower taxes - less revenue - can’t be ignored when revenue from the federal treasury also may drop.

In Washington a one-time, $700 million revenue surplus combined with heavy business taxes and a history of excessive state spending does add up to a case for tax cuts. But in view of the unknowns any cuts must be disciplined in size and aimed for maximum benefit - at the damaging business and occupation tax. Lawmakers also must show their prudence, a quality voters respect, by setting aside a majority of the $700 million as a rainy-day reserve.

In Idaho, where voters got a tax cut last year, an initiative to slash property taxes (and the schools that rely on them) probably will appear on the fall ballot. Wise legislators will ask how to reduce the pressure for this destructive proposal. One good way: Change the funding for two-year college programs, which serve the whole state but receive much of their budget from only three counties, including Kootenai. Colleges ought to depend only on the general treasury.

Taxes aside, the hottest state issue has to be the broken welfare system. Idaho’s GOP-dominated capitol has a clear opportunity to replace the welfare culture with a culture insistent on work and responsibility. In Washington, with more elaborate welfare benefits and bureaucracies than Idaho has, the case for reform is even greater. This state must start breaking up its Pentagon-like social bureaucracy, clearing out its Olympia payroll and replacing paper shufflers with front-line caseworkers.

There’s more on legislators’ agendas, some of it urgent, much of it mere posturing. Pending bills already are numerous enough to keep legislatures going long beyond scheduled adjournment dates. But this would be the wrong year to emulate Congress.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board