Buying off the voters, for fun and majority governments

I'm in an equal-opportunity mood for taking shots at the two parties that I've supported in the past. While the NDP floor-crossing bill I criticize in my previous post seems irrelevant to me, the Liberal's proposed Surplus Allocation Bill is such a blatant vote-grab it sickens me.

I'm of two minds about how a government surplus should be used. The part of me that despairs at growing class sizes in universities, a tin-pot military and endless health care waits thinks that the surplus money should actually be spent to improve government-run programs. The financially prudent side of me likes spending at least part of this money on debt repayment, in the hopes that this will free up more money in future years that won't have to be allocated to interest payments.

But returning it to the taxpayer? What a farce. In Alberta, Ralph Klein can at least point to an absence of provincial debt. But throwing away billions of dollars when you are still in debt doesn't strike me as all that wise.

Perhaps it will buy some votes in ridings with narrow margins. It's not hard to see why people are disgusted with the Martin government.

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