On Sept. 18, House Ways & Means Committee Vice-Chairman Steve Yarbrough was on an Arizona Tax Conference panel titled “Legislative View Of Tax Reform Proposals” with Senate President Ken Bennett, R-Dist. 1, and Senate Democratic Leader Jack Brown, Dist. 5. Bob Burgner, General Electric Company’s tax counsel, Dennis Hoffman, professor of economics at Arizona State University and Randie Stein, member of the Citizens Finance Review Commission, to whom he also refers, were on a preceding panel on tax reform.

As a preface to any comments I can offer on the legislative view of the tax reform ideas of Mr. Burgner, Dr. Hoffman, and Ms. Stein, I should put my status in some perspective.

I have been a legislator for eight months. Gee whiz, Sen. Brown has spent more than eight months on the floor of the Legislature and Sen. Bennett has been a city councilman and legislative leader for a good while, too.

I’ve listened carefully today. I’ve read all 15 reports generated by the staff of the CFRC [Governor Napolitano’s Citizens Finance Review Committee]. I’ve studied the “Arizona Campus 2003: Arizona Fiscal Policy Review,” which I know Dr. Hoffman contributed to. I am involved in some working groups with the House Ways and Means Committee looking at some related issues and I am paying close attention to our Tax Reform for Arizona Citizens or TRAC Committee. But my only significance as a freshman Republican legislator, who has spent 30-plus years in the business world trying to earn a living and not previously holding any public office before January, is that I am a member of that bright, delightful and gifted group of 20 freshmen House Republicans.

Of course, we all know that when it comes to reforms that involve raising taxes, the magic number in the House changes from 31 to 21. 21 “No” votes means a tax increase fails. Our 20 freshmen include at least 16 who I suspect are pretty cautious about taking more money from our citizens and giving it to the government. It’s not too hard to figure that there are probably a half dozen other members besides these freshmen who feel similarly, so reforms that raise taxes are going to have to have pretty universal appeal to find their way over to Mr. Bennett and Mr. Brown in the Senate.

In my brief eight months I have learned that the folks who want us to spend the citizens’ money — and probably to raise taxes so that we have more of it to spend — are very smart, and motivated, and relentless, and persuasive.

I’ve learned that the way to sway legislators to spend the citizens’ money, and logically to persuade the Legislature to take more of it as taxes, is to say every time, somehow “it is for the children.”

So, if your tax reform can be sufficiently cast as being “for the children” it will have a better chance. Apparently it doesn’t have to necessarily be true, but if you can make the connection your chances are improved.

A second principle, besides the “for the children” one, is to promote the tax increase as taking money from the rich people rather than poor people or “ordinary working people.” Most legislators are not rich people and regardless, they know most voters are not rich people. At least most Americans don’t think they are rich people and besides, the rich people can surely pay more taxes and at a higher rate than the rest of us because they still have more money left over after doing so.

So, if you are ever going to get 40 votes in the House for a tax increase, I think you need to be able to demonstrate that the increase is (1) “for the children,” and (2) taxes rich people rather than poor people or even better “ordinary working people.”

It would also be nice if you can argue that a particular tax increase will result in “more high-paying jobs for Arizona citizens.” Now any tax increase that will honestly do that is pretty amazing but it is a good argument to make if you can keep from smiling. Unfortunately, most people intuitively suspect that reducing rather than increasing taxes will achieve that outcome. But, I have a lot of respect for the folks who want to spend more of our citizens’ money and so I suspect that they can find a way to argue that increasing taxes rather than decreasing them will create more high-paying jobs for Arizona citizens.

The toughest challenge, I think, is to demonstrate that increasing taxes is better than just wisely spending what the current tax system brings in. So far voters in Oregon, Alabama, and Washington state have recently indicated that they didn’t prefer higher taxes overall, and Arizona citizens may well be like-minded.

Increasing some taxes while simultaneously reducing others, if the overall tax burden remains the same, may have some appeal but even that approach is going to depend somewhat on whose ox you choose to gore.

Rep. Steve Yarbrough is the vice chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.