A tale of two cons: Trump’s vaccine push and New Hampshire’s ‘advantage’

Are you listening, New Hampshire House Republicans? Facts and science can, sometimes, penetrate the thick veil of modern Republican fanaticism, as happened in the state Legislature this past session, eventually.

But Trump is in a perpetual death struggle with facts. And while he’s not lying when he says his proposed childhood vaccine schedule is similar to Denmark’s, he’s leaving out the part about how much the U.S. would have to change to make the comparison even resemble apples to apples. For starters, we’re going to need universal healthcare, a 75% subsidy for childcare, up to 52 weeks of parental leave, and, to help pay for all of that good stuff, an increase of the top marginal tax rate from 37% to 60.5%. Oh, and maybe a wealth tax down the line. 

I think Danish health official Anders Hviid would agree that the United States has a monumental task on its hands.

“It’s not at all fair to say look at Denmark unless you can match the other characteristics of Denmark,” he told The New York Times in December. Hviid, for what it’s worth, “leads research on vaccine safety and effectiveness at the Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the Times reported.

Political, economic, and societal myopia is the calling card of this administration, however, so I suspect the Denmark blueprint will begin and end with the proposal for unscientific vaccine recommendations. And, unfortunately, shortsightedness is not just a Washington problem; it defines New Hampshire’s administration, too.

While you can look at sector after sector to see how this self-inflicted ailment affects daily lives in the Granite State, the best place to start is public education. For example, there are two things Gov. Kelly Ayotte and her GOP colleagues consistently lament about the state of education here: low test scores in math and reading and the high local property taxes needed to pay for district schools. In her February State of the State address, Ayotte directed her Department of Education to find ways to improve the scores statewide and also declared that “our towns and municipalities need to get serious about fiscal responsibility” to reduce property taxes.

But the powers that be in New Hampshire have a habit of looking everywhere but their own house when it comes to assigning responsibility for various crises. For example, New Hampshire is one of five states that doesn’t offer a state-funded preschool program. I can’t imagine that’s exactly helping student test scores based on what we know about the importance of early learning. And no state invests less in public education than New Hampshire, even as its per-pupil spending is higher than all but a handful of states, each one of them in the high-cost-of-living Northeast. How does it pull off that fiscal magic trick? By relying on local dollars more than any other state in the country.

That’s your high local property tax rate.

None of this is particularly complicated, as UNH Carsey School of Public Policy outlines in a brief titled, “What is New Hampshire: Budget.”

“New Hampshire local governments have fewer resources than those in most other states despite high local taxes, largely because they receive less from their state government than do local governments in all but four other states,” the brief reads.

This is the sleight of hand at the heart of the so-called “New Hampshire Advantage.” We have not avoided a burden because of our tax system, we have just shifted it. Local taxpayers carry the full weight, and then, when it inevitably becomes too much to bear, the services we all rely on start to get cut until there’s nothing left. This is not an accident of the Republican plan but the point of it. Then begins the disingenuous hunt for the causes of our various crises, whether infrastructure failures or childcare access and affordability, as if policy choices hadn’t set it all in motion.

Here’s what Ayotte said in this year’s State of the State: “Raising taxes only ensures that the government gets more of your hard-earned money. That’s it.” 

And here’s what the Carsey School explainer says: “We pool resources as a society to use for purposes that we either cannot or choose not to pay for individually.”

That is the gist of the divide in New Hampshire. We can invest now to keep our shared challenges from becoming crises and to elevate our priorities, or we can pay a lot more later, accompanied by panic and finger-pointing, for futile attempts at remediation. Republicans in Concord keep choosing the latter, and Trump’s rapid downshifting of the federal burden onto states means New Hampshire’s downshifting onto local communities will only increase and accelerate.

Meanwhile, the political explanation for who or what is to blame for various crises operates like some kind of policy Ponzi scheme. The lies and misdirection keep getting more absurd to obscure what’s really happening.

Trump, in defending his proposal on childhood shots, said kids are receiving “gallons” of vaccines, which any parent can tell you is one of the most outlandish things a sitting president has ever uttered. And New Hampshire Republicans keep blaming communities for high local property taxes, as if those communities weren’t receiving a smaller state investment than in any other state in the country. 

In Wilco’s “Ashes of American Flags,” Jeff Tweedy sings, “All my lies are always wishes.” It’s a beautiful line, but it’s a terrible way to lead the people.