The Tyranny of the 11%

How 17 Iowa lawmakers and their rich friends can raise your taxes but keep theirs from going up.

Photo by Pretty Pink on Unsplash

If there’s anything Iowans can’t stand, it’s the broken politics of Washington, DC.

Yet, a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution would bring one of the federal government’s worst traits to the Iowa Statehouse.

Amendment 1, which is on the ballot this fall, is being pushed by wealthy special interests. It would let just 17 state senators, or 11.3% of the 150 lawmakers in Des Moines, reject the will of the majority.

This is one of the things that people hate most about Washington, DC. Even when the majority wants something done, special rules and well-connected insiders stand in the way. This happens on a range of issues.

Take paid family leave. Americans overwhelmingly support it, but Congress won’t pass it.

A ban on stock trading in Congress? This, too, is overwhelmingly popular. But Congress still can’t find a way to enact this commonsense reform.

A law professor, writing several years ago in the New York Times, called this unwillingness to do what most Americans clearly want, the “oppression of the supermajority.”

Citing wide public support for paid maternity leave, stronger privacy laws and the power of Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices, he wrote, “The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these.”

Yet, this is what’s in store for Iowa if Amendment 1 passes.

There are mechanisms in government that correctly prevent a majority from trampling the rights of the minority. But giving just 11% of Iowa lawmakers the power to block the will of the other 89% rejects the very notion of representative government. Yet, this would be the result of requiring a two-thirds supermajority in each house of the Legislature to raise income and corporate taxes. (But not sales taxes.)

Supporters of the amendment claim they’re only trying to do what 16 other states, including liberal California, have done with their supermajority rules. But what they don’t tell you is the vast majority of these states have a safety valve to stop the minority from exercising oppressive power.

It’s called the citizen ballot initiative.

California lets its citizens petition for amendments to their state Constitution. And people in both parties have used it to enact what their elected representatives would not. In fact, 12 of the 16 states with supermajority tax rules give their citizens the opportunity to bypass elected representatives and go directly to the people, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Iowa is not one of them. Iowa legislators hoard this power for themselves and the insiders who influence them. The only way to get a proposal on the ballot to change the Iowa Constitution is to go on bended knee to the gatekeepers in Des Moines. Or, in the case of the wealthy, with enough money in hand.

Iowa Legislature. (Photo: Screengrab from Iowa PBS)

Here’s the truth about Amendment 1: The Republican-run Legislature is steadily changing who pays for government. They’re shifting the cost from the rich and the corporations to the rest of us by raising less money from income and corporate taxes and more from sales and consumption taxes. Amendment 1 is aimed at locking in this shift.

Republican political leaders have already said they are eager to get rid of corporate and individual incomes taxes altogether. Zach Lahn, the Republican candidate for governor, said in April he wants to rely solely on sales and property taxes. If voters approve Amendment 1, this will be easier to accomplish because 11% of state legislators will be empowered to stop a corporate income tax increase. But 49% won’t be able to stop a higher gas or sales tax because Amendment 1 excludes these taxes from the two-thirds threshold.

That’s not right. It’s also a sure-fire recipe for a higher sales tax.

This will give the wealthy a huge advantage over poor and middle-income Iowans. Just as importantly, it will enshrine in the Iowa Constitution what I call the Tyranny of the 11%.

Want to raise corporate taxes rather than the sales tax? Ask the 11%. They’re the ones with the power, not the other 89%.

Should the richest Iowans pay the same share of their incomes as the rest of us in total state and local taxes? (They currently don’t.) Ask the privileged 11% and their wealthy friends. They’re the ones who will hold the power if Amendment 1 passes, not the 89%.

Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “Who Pays?” 7th Edition, 2024.

I don’t think this is how most Iowans believe government should be run. Whether it’s in Washington, DC, or Des Moines. The majority ought to respect the rights of the minority, of course, but when 11% of the state Legislature can dictate to the other 89%, there is something fundamentally wrong. Amendment 1 is not just financially unwise, but it is anti-democratic and betrays Iowa’s traditional notion of what is right and fair.

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