POLITICS
Not My Man, Mitch
By Elizabeth Station
Here in Indiana the spring days are getting longer, but it’s still pretty
dark outside when we get up in the morning. Politics aside, most of us hold
Governor Mitch Daniels personally responsible. Let me explain.
Just after the 2004 election, Daniels decreed that getting Indiana on daylight-saving time would be a top priority for his new administration. Hoosiers have long resisted the notion of messing with our clocks to be in step with the rest of the country. As a result, most of the state has been spending half the year on Chicago time and the other half on New York’s. It was confusing, but we liked it that way.
But Daniels – a Republican who ran the Democrats out of the governor’s mansion by saying it was time for a change – has long had a bee in his bonnet about daylight savings. He argued that keeping our clocks on Eastern Time was the key to jump-starting the state economy. Once the suits on Wall Street knew what time it was in Indiana, he reasoned, they’d be running to the phones to offer us our jobs back.
So after much bullying and fanfare, all but eight Indiana counties sprang forward with the rest of the country last month. In the fall, we’ll fall back again. If Hoosiers are to believe Governor Daniels, this simple solution will awaken the slumbering economic giant in the country’s midst. But if we believe Rep. B. Patrick Bauer – the top Democrat in the Indiana statehouse – the time change is an unlikely fix. “Time took our jobs?” he hooted. “Not China?” He may have a point there.
Blade Runner
In Indiana, like elsewhere, sharp lines divide citizens over issues like jobs, immigration, and the war in Iraq. Those of us who don’t like what the war is costing – or the deficits and spending priorities that the Bush tax cuts have helped fuel – hold Mitch Daniels partly responsible for that, too.
Daniels served as Bush’s first director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), from 2001 to 2003. When he ran for governor in 2004, he happily embraced the moniker that “W” gave him on the campaign trail – “My Man Mitch.” Daniels toured Indiana in a “My Man Mitch” RV to make a homey impression on rural voters and remind rivals of his cozy relationship with the president. But he was less eager for Hoosiers to learn about an earlier nickname Bush had given him – “The Blade” – earned from his willingness, as OMB head, to slash social spending.
Daniels was the chief architect of the first Bush tax cut and largely responsible for implementing its consequences, although he’d had no prior experience managing federal budgets. In the administration’s heady early days, The Washington Monthly called him “the most powerful man in the Bush administration you’ve never heard of.” But Daniels didn’t stay in Washington long. After just two years at OMB, he cut and ran for Indiana to launch his campaign for governor.
Our Man Mitch had the prescience (or luck) to get out of Dodge just before the war in Iraq starting running up its shocking tab. But in his 29-month tenure as the nation’s budgetary steward, Daniels did some pretty impressive work. For starters, he took a $236 billion annual surplus in 2001 and turned it into a $400 billion deficit by 2003.
Shortly before Bush invaded Iraq, Daniels also pooh-poohed predictions that the war would cost over $200 billion. He dismissed that figure as “very, very high” and said that the tab would approximate the $50 to 60 billion spent for the first Gulf War. With current estimates now running closer to $1 trillion, the numbers don’t lie: Mitch is a lousy prognosticator.
Highway Robbery
Fast forward to 2006, where Governor Daniels’ latest gambit is to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a private Spanish-Australian consortium, Macquarie-Cintra, for $3.8 billion. With cash in hand, the administration plans to upgrade the state’s roads and bridges in a project called “Major Moves.” In exchange for the payout, Macquarie-Cintra (the company that also operates the Chicago Skyway) will collect Toll Road revenues for 75 years.
Daniels says that Major Moves will improve infrastructure without raising taxes and “create an estimated 130,000 jobs for Hoosiers or more.” Critics like State Senator John Broden counter that Daniels and the Republican-controlled General Assembly have sold us down the river. “If a private company could make a profit off the toll road, then why couldn’t Indiana do the same thing?” Broden asked. He also slammed the governor for outsourcing $432 million in public contracts to companies from states other than Indiana, which will provide prison services, road salt, and even advertising for the Hoosier Lottery.
Indiana is a red state but discomfort with the Toll Road lease – like opposition to the Dubai ports deal – crosses party lines. A recent poll showed that what bothers Hoosiers most about the deal is not the prospect of tolls going up, but the fact that a foreign company will control the roadway until 2081. That’s a long time to bet the farm on Gulf War economics.
Meanwhile, Daniels keeps trotting out the numbers to make it look like he’s in charge. Over Easter weekend he traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait on a taxpayer-financed junket and quickly assessed the situation, Mitch-style. “It’s hard to express how uplifting an experience this has been," Daniels said of his visit with troops. “Morale is high.” Sure, Baghdad was a war zone, but in Iraq, "All but three or four provinces are reasonably stable. About two-thirds of the population lives in areas where violence is reduced or minimal." And of course, he said, the economy was making a comeback.
Looking Ahead
In the 1990s, Mitch Daniels got rich as a top executive at Eli Lilly by keeping Prozac prices high and competing products out of the market. He’s never let his millions go to his head, though. Back in 2001, he proudly recalled for Time magazine an evening when he fished quarters out of a tavern toilet to pay for a pitcher of beer. By comparison the Toll Road lease sounds like enlightened policymaking, but the expression “penny wise and pound foolish” may also apply.
The more I learn about Daniels’ past, the more I worry for our state’s future. Indiana is ranked 33rd in the country in personal income and 46th in the educational level of its work force. We retain 30 percent fewer college graduates than the national average. I didn’t go to Princeton (Daniels did) but something tells me you don’t improve those numbers by changing clocks and slashing taxes. You need money, creativity, and stick-to-itiveness to strengthen public schools, keep good jobs at home, and combat a chronic brain drain.
Hoosiers may not feel a financial pinch at the tollbooth today, but between now and 2081 the state will feel the loss of the $50 million in annual revenue that the Toll Road is expected to generate. We could do a lot with those resources, if you believe, as I do, that government exists not for the quick fix but the long haul.
A few bright spots dot the short-term political horizon. Last month a grassroots citizen group filed suit to block the Toll Road deal (which becomes final on June 30) on the grounds that it violates the Indiana state constitution. Polls show that Daniels’ approval ratings dropped 18 points in his first year in office, making him the least popular sitting governor in state history. Negative fallout from the Toll Road and daylight-savings time battles hurt more than one Republican candidate in primary elections last week. November may bring more change.
Although Daniels won’t be up for reelection until 2008, I’m guessing that his days, like his sound bites, are numbered. And there’s one question about the future that I feel confident answering right now. Ten years hence, when the Toll Road windfall is long spent and we’ve spanned the mighty Ohio River with better bridges to Kentucky, who’ll lead the plunge into the toilet to buy Indiana out of this jam?
Based on his track record, it won’t be Mitch Daniels.