CAR-TAX-CUT FOES PUT DOUBLESPEAK IN OVERDRIVE.

Byline: K. Lloyd Billingsley

OPPONENTS of cutting or eliminating the state's tax on automobiles say the money would be spent better on education. But the debate on the issue has provided a valuable lesson on basic principles not taught in California's public schools.

The Golden State's economy is booming and its coffers bulging with a budget surplus of more than $4 billion, a lot of money by any standard. The sheer amount may have diverted attention from the source.

The economy is booming because California's entrepreneurs are innovating, living on the cutting edge and creating products that consumers at home and abroad find useful and are willing to buy in an open market. On the other hand, the government of California sells no products, provides no innovation and has no money of its own.

All the money in the budget, not just the surplus, comes from taxes and fees imposed on the hard-working people of California. In other words, the state depends on the people, not the reverse. The state is a consumer of wealth, not a producer. That vital reality is often forgotten, unintentionally by the citizens who pay and deliberately by politicians who spend their money.

In the recent elections, all the candidates for governor wanted to give varying portions of this money back to the taxpayers who provide it in the first place. The reaction from the Sacramento establishment was swift and predictable. State Senate leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, described the $4 billion surplus as a ``score,'' a revealing choice of words. Addicts seek to score illicit drugs and criminals say they seek a score when they talk about taking down a bank or armored car. Burton's use of the term is different only in degree, not in kind.

Like thieves, governments like to intercept money at transition points: when people marry (license fees), when people work (federal and state income tax, which the state gets before the worker does), when people buy things (the 8.5 percent sales tax) and when people die, in the form of the inheritance tax. (In California, death provides no exemption from the tax man.)

The entire package of taxes and fees can easily surpass what people spend on such luxuries as housing and food. Citizens find themselves in that position because politicians of both parties are positively addicted to spending.

Burton also said that to give any of the surplus back to the taxpayers would be ``blowing it,'' another enlightening phrase. Blowing it means wasting it, the way a child blows money on candy or a drunken sailor on booze.

California's car tax, as it happens, is a belch from the days when the state taxed personal property. In a state where an automobile is a necessity of life, this tax - up to several hundred dollars per year - punishes people across the spectrum, particularly the working poor.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, D-Los Angeles, said that to cut the car tax would be to steal money from the children. In fact, it steals money from those who provide for the children, their parents. The speaker also said that if the tax is kept intact, Californians will get it anyway since the state plans to spend it on education.

Villaraigosa thus provides a parable of the doctrine that citizens cannot be relied upon to look after their own interests and that the government knows how to spend their money better than they do.

None of these basic realities is taught in California's public schools so this debate has provided a valuable service. In the eyes of California's political establishment, the state has a prior claim to what people earn, citizens are patsies rife for a ``score,'' and to give them back their own money is to throw it away. It is better in their view to spend it on new programs.

Before trying any new spending, California's establishment needs to respect taxpayers and their rights. And they need to remind themselves that we don't get those rights from the government. We are born with those rights and it is the first duty of any government to respect and preserve them.

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Photo: (Color) no caption (Pete Wilson)