Get Petulant, Oregon

Oregonians have a rare opportunity to slow the Salem money machine

Oregon State Rep. Mark Gamba (D-Milwaukie) believes tax-wary voters act like “petulant children.”

In Oregon, there are relatively few competitive political questions because it is not, generally, a politically competitive state. Progressive Democrats control every statewide office, supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and ideological allies helm every politically relevant media, educational and cultural institution. Progressives usually get what they want without much of a fuss.

Every so often, though, the progressive march through the state is slowed, or even halted, when circumstances conspire to give opponents an edge.

Circumstances have conspired! Democratic leadership’s top agenda item, a massive tax and fee hike to rake billions of dollars more into Salem, putatively for spending on highways and transit and maybe a wildlife bridge or two, teeters on the brink in the waning days of this year’s legislative session.

The newest version of the frequently morphing bill is HB 2025. One of its sponsors is State Representative Mark Gamba (D-Milwaukie). Gamba told Oregon Public Broadcasting early this year, in preparation for his well-telegraphed demand for more money from taxpayers, that Oregonians who oppose paying more taxes act like “petulant children.”

This elaboration from OPB warrants quoting:

“Every year, cities and counties get poorer and poorer and their infrastructure gets older and older,” said state Rep. Mark Gamba, a Democratic sponsor of [a bill to allow cities to raise gas taxes without a vote of the people] and the former mayor of Milwaukie. “That’s a recipe for bad things.”

HB 2025 is the currently visible tip of the iceberg of all things Oregon: shall we petulant children entrust more of our money and power to a state government that’s driven the state straight into the ditch on education, homelessness, housing, economic growth, business climate, addiction, mental health, competency, transparency and, well, nearly every measurable outcome of public policy?

I don’t believe we should. Here’s why it’s time to get petulant.

HB 2025 would collect more than $2 billion per year from taxpayers when fully implemented

The Oregon Legislative Revenue Office released a draft report last week showing a massive tax and fee hike wending its way through the legislature would re-allocate an additional $2 billion per year from Oregonians to their state government ten years from enactment via increases in the state gas tax, registration fees and payroll taxes. I first read about the report in Oregon Public Broadcasting, which also helpfully linked to it.

According to the report, the most recent publicly available version of the behemoth bill would add $240 million to state coffers in its first year with the annual bite increasing each year as new taxes and fees are implemented until it will gobble up $2.063 billion in fiscal year 2035, which is only 10 years from now even though it sounds like the distant future, at least to me.

To put that in context, Oregon’s real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product, the value of all goods and services created in Oregon, was $265 billion in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, venturing cautiously into math here, the Legislative Revenue Office projects the tax bill would redirect to the control of the state in 2035 an amount of revenue equivalent to 0.8%, nearly one dollar out of every 100, of Oregon’s entire 2024 economic output.

Yes, yes, I’m comparing 2035 tax revenue to 2024 economic output, which has its limitations. Oregon’s economy will (hopefully) be considerably larger in 2035 than it was in 2024, even if projections of slower growth due to population stagnation and the state government’s zeal for, ahem, tax hikes and regulations are correct. A dollar will also be less valuable in 2035 than it was in 2024. It’s far from an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does help me, at least, wrap my head around the scope of the tax hike.

By any measure, that’s a huge re-allocation of wealth and power from us to the people, like Rep. Gamba, who run our state government.

The point is the money, not the roads

Oregon’s state government is best understood as a machine that turns tax revenue into votes for progressive Democrats who raise more taxes, funneled through their allied public employee unions. The machine’s operation is dependent on increasing tax revenues because rising tax revenues beget more dues-paying public employee union members the dues from whom keep progressives in power to keep the cogs turning with yet-more tax revenue.

This churn is the only thing Oregon’s state government does consistently competently. It does a bad job at most everything else because “everything else” is an afterthought. We petulant children are an afterthought, an annoyance, tolerated only because we’re the schmucks who have to pay the taxes.

The champions of HB 2025 talk about using the bill’s billions to maintain highways and bridges because they’ve heard us kids like driving to get places. But this is just the incentive to get our legislators to agree to take more of our money. No one seriously believes Oregon’s progressive Democrats prioritize spending on infrastructure to help people drive more. They’ve spent years trying to make driving more costly and unappealing. Indeed, the 15-cent-per-gallon gas tax hike, registration fee increases and other revenue raisers are desireable to progressives in part because they deter driving on the infrastructure they say will be built or maintained with the higher taxes.

Funny enough, one of the stated goals of HB 2025 is to finish projects promised to taxpayers last time the state hiked the gas tax, in 2017. That should tell you everything you need to know about what’s going to happen with HB 2025’s billions, if it becomes law.

Democrats need petulant children in order to pass HB 2025

Depending on the availability of one House member who is undergoing cancer treatment, Democrats do not need any Republican votes to pass HB 2025. However, they believe they need Republican support to sap energy behind an effort to repeal HB 2025 if it passes. The backers of that effort made a splash by announcing they had already raised $186,000 from (petulant) car dealers.

Democrats for good reason fear the involvement of, uh, democracy in their tax hike efforts. Gas taxes are exceedingly unpopular and regressive in that they hurt poor people more than rich people. Progressive Democrats therefore have taken on the role of regressive anti-democrats, pushing to pass a regressive tax bill and avoid the unpleasantness of having to obtain the approval of the people.

The thinking is that if Democrats can peel off some Republican votes in the legislature, the petulant children coalition necessary for repealing HB 2025 will fracture, freeing the Salem money machine to keep on humming.

For that to happen, progressives need legislative Republicans to believe they have the political room to vote yes. For that to happen, Oregon’s petulant children of all political stripes need to stand down, to act not petulantly but compliantly.

That would be a wasted opportunity to force reform of Oregon’s money machine that serves us all so poorly.

It’s time to get petulant.