[P]oliticians tend to be very sure of themselves. So sure that they often proceed as though they merely have to state their claims. They need not do anything as outlandish as offering evidence that their claims withstand scrutiny.
One result is policy-making by conjecture. An officeholder (or, in fairness, a lobbyist, an activist, a college professor, and even sometimes a journalist) will proclaim that if only the government will follow his or her recommendation, he/she knows exactly what the consequences will be.
Probably the most famous and pervasive example is the regular recurrence of the assertion that cutting taxes will increase economic growth. What has actually happened is that sometimes faster economic growth follows tax reductions and sometimes it does not. And then sometimes faster economic growth follows tax increases. In a rational world, these facts would dissuade people from claiming that every tax increase will produce faster economic growth. This is not a rational world.
More locally, more recently, and with much less audacity, Gov. Phil Scott, in his State of the State speech last January, suggested that one way to get more people to stay in or move to Vermont would be to give members of the National Guard free tuition at state colleges.
And how did Scott know that this free tuition would convince more people to become or remain Vermonters?
He didn’t. It was conjecture. It was reasonable conjecture. As the governor said, a third of the 3,500 members of the Vermont National Guard aren’t Vermonters, and many leave the state when they leave the Guard.
But reasonable conjecture is not evidence, none of which was offered, perhaps because none was requested. Not (then) by lawmakers, and not by reporters, including this one. It was almost as though challenging the assumption would appear impertinent. After all, it seemed like a good idea. It might work, and it wasn’t a government appropriation, so it wouldn’t cost any money.
Except that it was a government appropriation and it would cost money, and that’s why when the state budget is adopted, possibly by week’s end, that tuition break probably won’t be there. Neither, in all likelihood, will Scott’s plan to eliminate the state income tax on military pensions.
That’s because eventually legislators did look into it, asked the probing questions that had to be asked, and brought up the uncomfortable realities that the governor glossed over and everyone else ignored.
Like a tax break, free tuition is a government expense, just like writing a check drawn on the state treasury. Like any other expense, the money can only come from higher taxes, more revenue from economic growth, or cutting spending elsewhere in the budget. Scott won’t agree to any tax increases and economic growth is modest. So this money had to come from cutting other programs.
Legislators in both houses decided that those other programs were more important than the proposed tuition and tax breaks. Among the programs the Scott administration wanted to cut were those providing services to paraplegics and quadriplegics, the elderly, the developmentally disabled, and poor children.
“All this would have reduced services for the most vulnerable Vermonters,” said Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who also noted that the Scott budget would have cut at least one program that — like his free tuition plan for Guard members — is designed to attract people to the state: a loan repayment plan to encourage doctors to open practices in rural areas.
Besides, Kitchel said, senators were not convinced that Scott’s proposals would end up increasing the state’s workforce. It was just conjecture.
And in this case, it was all the senators who were not convinced. Unlike some budget disagreements, these were not between big-spending Democrats and the fiscally prudent Republican governor. The budget bill was approved unanimously by the Appropriations Committee and 29-to-0 (with one senator absent) by the whole Senate.
Not that Republicans are the only ones who make policy based on conjecture. After the strongest charges against alleged would-be school shooter Jack Sawyer were dismissed, Scott and legislators in both parties supported bills that would make it easier to prosecute people who had made threats and impose stiff penalties on anyone who threatened a school.
No one really tried to demonstrate how these bills would prevent someone from shooting up a school, or even make some kind of mass shooting less likely. This, too, was reasonable conjecture.
That doesn’t necessarily render it unwise. Public policy is not science, and sometimes decisions have to be made even if the evidence supporting a course of action falls short of providing absolute truth. There is, for instance, evidence indicating that the controversial gun laws passed last month will be effective. But that evidence falls short of conclusive proof.
It’s based on correlation, which as the academics like to say is not causation. Generally, stronger gun laws correlate with fewer guns and fewer guns correlate with less gun violence. Massachusetts has the nation’s strongest gun laws and the lowest firearm death rate in the country, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The low death rate could be because of the tough laws. Or it could be because Massachusetts is one of the most affluent and highly educated states.
Vermont’s firearm death rate is the 15th lowest in the country but the highest in New England and one of the highest in the Northeast, largely because of the state’s suicide rate is the 18th highest in the country.
The idea that the new laws will help bring down that rate in the future is based on more than conjecture, but less than certainty.
