Has New Hampshire Changed Forever?

Cross posted on Grizzly Groundswell

 Here is a link to an article that sums up the current state of New Hampshire perfectly. The author agrees with a point that I have been trying to make here for quite some time, and that is that New Hampshire is slipping away. Slowly but surely. It is a gradual decline, but it is noticable if only you look. Too many people aren’t looking though.

 This is the article in it’s entirety from the New Hampshire Union Leader:

By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS

IS NEW HAMPSHIRE changing for good? For years New Hampshire was called an island of sanity in a sea of socialism, a free market holdout surrounded on all sides by a growing and more intrusive government. But the Old New Hampshire is increasingly being replaced by a larger more involved government moving us ever closer to Massachusetts.

To be fair, the mythological version of “Old New Hampshire” may have been exaggerated. The Granite State was not colonized by Milton Friedman and conservative economists didn’t sit around pushing a free market agenda. Instead, in contrast to other exploding state governments, we just didn’t grow as much.

Our taxes were low because we didn’t raise them. When other states passed a sales tax and income tax, we said no. After Gov. Sherman Adams said government needed a broadbased tax, we resisted. Instead we turned to Gov. Hugh Gregg who said let’s hold down government spending so we don’t have to raise taxes.

As recently as 10 years ago, that attitude still prevailed. After the worst recession since the Great Depression, Gov. Steve Merrill used a large electoral majority to eliminate two taxes and cut others including a pro-growth cut in business taxes. His budget was the first in modern times to actually reduce spending. Like Gov. Gregg 40 years earlier, reducing spending to limit an average citizen’s tax burden was the policy goal.

In that same time period, a selectman famously refused to sign his town’s bid for federal emergency relief funds after a snowstorm. He announced sensibly that snow was neither unexpected nor a disaster in northern New Hampshire.

Slowly but surely, however, New Hampshire is changing. We’re not changing all at once but it is gradual and steady. Steve Merrill’s great budget spent $1.7 billion. The most recent two-year budget will spend about $3.2 billion, an 88 percent increase. In the same time period, inflation will be about 38 percent. With education funding, the total paid for with state taxes is $5 billion or 193 percent more than we had to tax 12 years ago.

Government is getting larger but it’s also getting more intrusive. On the smallest issues and the biggest issues, the impulse of the Legislature is to pass more laws and regulate more things. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a new balloon tax. It was a silly $250 fine for releasing a balloon. The bill was ultimately killed by the Senate, but it’s a symbol of the new impulse to regulate.

The state decided to ban smoking in all restaurants. Never mind that many restaurants chose to do so on their own for marketing reasons. Smoking sections in a minority of restaurants weren’t enough. Smoking is a legal if unhealthy act but you can’t do it in a bar. Even a modest bill this year to allow cigar bars is likely to die. Smoke at home if you want, but we can’t allow people to smoke together and have a drink at the same time.

Each year we add new rules to health insurance. You can’t buy basic coverage, there are more and more mandates that drive up the cost so that New Hampshire, the healthiest state in the country, has the highest health insurance. This year, we intend to move from government dictating some of the rules of insurance to government actually designing the product.

The state will require every private insurance company in the state to offer a wellness plan designed not by their own professionals but by regulatory officials of the government. That seems to take us most of the way to having state government itself get into the business and eliminate the need for these pesky insurance companies.

Each step along the way is well-intentioned. A fund for preserving barns? We all like old barns. A system of price supports for producers of milk? I don’t want to see the state without dairy farms. While we’re at it, we might also subsidize those cute little soft serve ice cream stands too, everyone likes those.

The problem isn’t one action, it’s the cumulative value and the mindset. What other businesses should we provide price supports for? If the state can design insurance plans better than the company can, what other businesses can we run better?

 This article sums up my feelings perfectly. It is time for New Hampshire voters to wake up and save us from the nanny state, tax and spend, liberal government before it is too late. If it isn’t already.