Taming the Administrative State & Enhancing the Missouri Economy: Jonathan Williams on NewstalkSTL
ALEC President and Chief Economist Jonathan Williams joined Tim Jones on The Vic Porcelli Show to discuss the complexities of federal gridlock, the impact of the administrative state, and strategies for fiscal responsibility at both the national and state levels.
The conversation began with the impact of federal gridlock and its impact on issuing critical policy reforms. Williams noted that while there are conservative voices in Congress, they lack the numbers to pass major reforms like balancing the budget.
“We’ve got some great people fighting a good fight,” Williams remarked. “Unfortunately, the numbers are just a little bit short on some of these big-picture conservative reforms that we all know need to happen, such as balancing our budget and doing so many other things that we need to do at a federal level, securing American election policy.”
Jones added to that, noting how the “administrative state” and federal bureaucracy bloat can act as obstacles to meaningful government reform.
“At the state level, we’re seeing some good gains,” Williams emphasized. “Missouri’s been discussing this in Jeff City on things like the REINS Act to say, the legislative branch should have more control over major rules before they’re adopted.”
He also noted how such restrictions have allowed daily tasks, such as balancing the budget, to be left on autopilot, with approximately 75 to 80 percent of the current federal budget considered “off the books” due to entitlement spending being on autopilot.
“Things that are off budget,” He explained, “that the normal order of passing a budget and trying to get spending under control, you don’t tackle those things because they’re essentially on autopilot. “That’s one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to arrest this growth in spending and debt.”
Continuing on the budgets, Jones noted how states face similar challenges to the federal government regarding entitlement spending and mandatory requirements like Medicaid and education. Williams pointed to the need for priority-based budgeting instead of simply increasing last year’s budget by a certain percentage.
“We’ve got to get outside of this budgeting as usual because it’s not the friend of us as fiscal conservatives,” he emphasized. “We need to get debt and spending under control at all levels of government. It’s the major driver of this inflation and some of the affordability concerns.”
The discussion then turned to Missouri’s potential to eliminate its state income tax to drive economic and population growth. Williams explained that voters may be hesitant to eliminate income tax if they fear the burden will simply shift to property or sales taxes.
“I think that when you look at probably the biggest objection to that point is you know people don’t want to see the deck chairs rearranged on a sinking ship.”
To ease these fears, Williams suggested implementing a taxpayer bill of rights or spending limits, similar to models used in Colorado.
“Just as we were talking about with Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” he explained, “our good friend Jim Murphy, led a valiant effort that passed the House overwhelmingly to put a taxpayer bill of rights spending limit into Missouri. Let’s take this concept that worked and let’s take the fears off the table to say yes, we should work on eliminating the income tax because it’s the right thing to do for economic growth reasons to grow Missouri population and business growth and job growth, all the other virtues that come with being a no-income tax state.”