Everyone has his price, the saying goes, and Eleanor Holmes Norton is coming pretty close to discovering mine. Norton is the District of Columbia’s representative in Congress. She has proposed to save the District from its desperate economic and fiscal trouble by granting it a remarkable privilege: a flat federal tax rate of 15 percent for District residents, atop a $ 15,000 basic exemption for single-filers and $ 25,000 for heads of households.
There was a time when the grasping selfishness of this proposal would have shocked me. That was, of course, before I moved into the District myself. Now I see a curious libertarian logic to the Norton plan: The District has already abolished virtually all government services; why not complete the job and scrap taxes as well?
It’s a funny thing how the mind works. Outsiders might object that the rest of the country seems able to struggle along paying the federal tax rates; that the District’s problem really lies in its crushing local taxes and appallingly overstaffed and incompetent civil service. But what do they know? With every passing day, I find myself more and more impressed with the good sense and foresight (did I mention compassion?) of the Norton plan.
The entitlement mentality so pervasive in the District — a mentality epitomized by Bob Dole’s “you owe me” campaign for the Republican nomination – – has also infected me. Haven’t I wasted five days trying to register my car in the District? Don’t I drive over streets that make San Salvador look like an automotive utopia in comparison? Aren’t I a victim of a police force that seems to have decided to decriminalize crime? Don’t I live in the only national capital this side of Kampala where you can’t drink the water. Damn it — America owes me too!
There is something beguiling about the vision of the District of Columbia as Monaco on the Potomac. Those of us who live here already feel that we’re living in a sort of foreign enclave within the United States. Add a strict banking-secrecy law — a measure that I am sure would obtain Mayor Barry’s enthusiastic backing — and a few three-star restaurants, and the analogy would be perfect. The mayhem on the streets is at least as frightening as the worst of the driving on the Ferrari-crammed Corniche.
Better still, we already have a local equivalent of the famed Monte Carlo casino: the District’s equally famed automobile registry. Here’s how the game works. When it comes time to register your car, you send the District $ 100. A few lucky gamblers receive a new sticker; the rest have to send in another $ 100 and try again. And just as Prince Rainier rules Monaco by divine right, so too does the local political dynasty rule the District — although Cora Barry acts more like Imelda Marcos than Grace Kelly.
Well perhaps I’m going a little too far. Short of Monacization, there is another possible solution to the District’s problems, and one that might irritate the rest of the country a little less than the Norton tax cut: Grant the District its perpetual demands for statehood. The publication of such an idea in THE WEEKLY STANDARD may raise a few eyebrows. After all, conservatives have been scoffing for years at the notion that the country’s most misgoverned city, population 500,000 and falling by 12,000 a year, whose principal source of income is transfer payments from the rest of the country, ought to enjoy the privilege of electing two senators. But look at the other side: Article IV of the Constitution guarantees every state a republican form of government. Whatever that phrase means, it must mean that Marion Barry would not be allowed to be ruler for life of the Rutiranian principality he has made of what was once a great city. Mustn’t it?
DAVID FRUM
