State solutions

            From the floor of the Senate in 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts rose to give another one of his fiery anti-slavery speeches.  This time he went too far when he called  South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler an imbecile and said, "Senator Butler has chosen a mistress. I mean the harlot, slavery."  Two days later, Butler's cousin, Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina, avenged his family's honor by bludgeoning  Sumner with his gold-tipped cane and almost killed him.  It took years for Sumner to recover.

            Maybe we have grown a little more civilized these days.  But the counterproductive spectacle of name-calling going on in Washington these days makes some of us wonder if the federal system of government devised by our Founding Fathers is fatally flawed.  Extremists at both ends of the political spectrum rarely show that they are interested in solving problems.  Instead, when they take time off from slandering each other, they go trolling for votes so they can stay in power, or seek glory in martyrdom by sacrificing themselves on the altar of ideology.  But it needn't be that way. 
            In  a recent article, Cal Thomas demonstrated that Washington should follow the example of several states that have achieved a high level of success in those very areas that have plagued our federal government.  Louisiana, Ohio, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have all done very well in growing their states' economy: GDP is up, unemployment is down, personal income is up, taxes are down, manufacturing is up, deficits are down. 
            How did they do it?  They enacted tax reform, they shrunk their bureaucracies, they modernized programs like Medicaid, and they worked with private industry to create jobs programs that really work.    
            If these states can solve their problems, why can't Washington?  Thomas points out that the five states all have Republican governors.  This is more than a clue.  What they all have in common is the belief that smaller government, lower taxes, and free enterprise are the elements that foster growth.  Not more spending, not higher taxes, not job-killing regulations.
            North Carolina, with tax reform enacted this past year by its Republican legislature and signed by its Republican governor, seems to have gotten the message.  Maybe the next time Cal Thomas writes about the states that have shown the way to economic growth, North Carolina will have been added to the list.