{"id":1137,"date":"2011-10-19T09:22:40","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T13:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2011-10-19T09:22:40","modified_gmt":"2011-10-19T13:22:40","slug":"rokita-92-discusses-tax-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2011\/10\/19\/rokita-92-discusses-tax-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Rokita ’92 Discusses Tax Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Dykstra ’13 <\/em>– Increasing income taxes on the poor stirred a heated discussion Tuesday evening that engaged students, faculty, and Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita \u201992.<\/p>\n

Rokita returned to his Alma Mater to honor the late Dr. Edward McLean and to provide a lecture about the increasing American debt. He targeted mandatory spending as the driving cause of our nation\u2019s debt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Rokita spent time one-on-one with students before his evening talk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe have to ask ourselves as a country who we are going to be,\u201d Rokita said. \u201cWe have always been a country that put its future ahead of ourselves and I want to know if we are still that. We can call [this time] as Reagan called it, \u2018a time for choosing.\u2019 We have to choose who we want to be. Are we going to be a people that puts the government ahead of us in terms of decisions we make for individuals because we think they can do it better or are we going to be a nation that puts individuals ahead of government? It is an open question \u2013 who we are going to be and how we are going to go about doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rokita opened his lecture by playing a clip from his Congressional hearing about the late Dr. McLean from last Friday. Ian McLean, the son of Dr. Edward McLean, expressed his appreciation succeeding Rokita\u2019s lecture and felt the honorary special orders hearing about the late Dr. McLean represented his father \u201cvery well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is link<\/a> for video of Rokita\u2019s Congressional salute to Dr. McLean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe debate represented my father very well; the concern for the future of the country and the preservation of liberty represented him very well,\u201d McLean said. \u201cOne of the nice things about my dad is that he was exactly the way he was at home the way Representative Rokita described him in public. And my father liked truth and true solutions more than he liked solutions that certain groups require.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rokita presented McLean\u2019s family with the speech he made during the special orders address as it appears on Congressional record.<\/p>\n

Rokita suggested reforming Medicare into a \u201ccontribution structure\u201d rather than \u201cdefined benefit, fee-for-service structure\u201d and increasing the age to receive social security according to the normal age retirement.<\/p>\n

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Rokita greeting students and staff at a 4:15 p.m. reception.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s compare today to the last time that our debt equaled one hundred percent of our GDP, which was in World War II,\u201d Rokita said. \u201cWhy can\u2019t this debt situation be solved? Number one, World War II was a one-time event. One way or another we knew the war was likely going to end and the debt we were encoring would be paid back. The drivers of our debt today are not one-time events; they are continuing government programs that really don\u2019t have any intention of stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cForty-seven percent of our debt is owned by foreign nations, the largest of which being China. So you can see why the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff had said that terrorism is not the main threat to our National Security. The main threat is our debt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rokita\u2019s audience gave mixed reviews to his solutions. A debate took place between Professor of Economics Frank Howland and Rokita which expanded to debates within the audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Rep. Todd Rokita’s presentation was great as a non-partisan presentation of the national debt being an issue that is continuing to define every aspect of US politics,\u201d Philip Robin\u201913 said. \u201cHowever, I think the \u2018talk politics\u2019 concept he presented for bringing change was very much wishful thinking. I understand that in order for anything to happen public pressure needs to occur, but generally the majority of the people are unconcerned with the problems of tomorrow and are too distracted or reluctant to really engage the problem. His solution of reorganizing Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security were much more feasible, but congressmen are naturally adverse to cutting things and risking accusations of not bringing benefits by their constituencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Howland questioned Rokita on whether he supported raising taxes on lower income families. Howland disagreed with two specific aspects of Rokita\u2019s solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne was he seemed to think that he wasn\u2019t advocating to raise taxes on poor people, but I think that was clearly wrong because he said that about 50 percent of the population does not pay taxes and that 50 percent of the population is overwhelming people on the low end of the income scale,\u201d Howland said. \u201cAnd if he wants more people to pay income taxes, it is going to be those people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other part of the disagreement was a more philosophical one and less of an empirical one, and that was: should we raise taxes on the rest of us? He thinks that people are already paying their fair share; I think that they could pay more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor of Political Science Alexandra Hoerl praised the discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that being able to model this sort of interaction and being able to talk to an elected official and being able to engage is an important lesson for students. Hopefully this is a behavior that they will emulate; but, I think it was nice to see dialogue between the professors and Congressman Rokita: to watch a disagreement be played out and then resolved\u2014things of that nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howland also found the debate useful to Wabash students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is useful,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very glad that students talked to (Rokita) and I am glad that they listened to him. I wish more students were here because he raised some important political issues and because he is a Wabash grad. I\u2019m glad he came and I\u2019m glad he opened it up; he wanted to hear from students\u2014that is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Dykstra ’13 – Increasing income taxes on the poor stirred a heated discussion Tuesday evening that engaged students, faculty, and Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita \u201992. Rokita returned to his Alma Mater […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2011\/10\/Rokita275.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}