Kim Reynolds 2024!
A Glimpse of a Provocative, Thoughtful and Decent Center-Right Vision for America’s Future
“I’m very competitive by nature,” —Kim Reynolds
In one of the most extraordinary mainstream blockbuster movies of the last two decades, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” ( in which I find a wealth of moral philosophy for understanding the existential crisis of democracy in the modern age), the police commissioner describes Batman as the hero, not that the broken city of Gotham deserves, but that they needed.
In a phrase, not that she is necessarily batman, that is how I feel about the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds. America—which, with a broken congress, dysfunctional underfunded law enforcement, mendacious politicians unchecked by constitutional principles, violent and petty crime at its worst in decades, inflation at its worst in decades, America whose government just a couple years ago was threatened with a violent uprising incited by a demagogue—is looking more and more like Gotham; and it might not deserve the closest thing in our midst to an American Margaret Thatcher. But Mrs Reynolds’s aggressive fiscal conservatism is what this country needs.
Charlie Niebergall/ Associated Press
Tax Reform and Budgeting
There is no elected official in American politics right now whose record of fiscal accomplishment is so stellar. Reynolds has gone further to lower taxes in Iowa than any other politician in any other state in the country, dramatically lowering the cost of living for Iowa citizens while increasing government revenue. She cut the corporate income tax from 9.8 to 5.5 percent, and she overhauled Iowa’s nine bracket income tax system, lowering the income tax from 9% in the top bracket to a 3.9% flat tax. She has abolished inheritance taxes, and she has ceased to tax retirement income; whereupon implementing the reform, she said her father called her, asking how much more he would be getting out of his paycheck. When she gave him the news, she said he was “pretty excited.”
And she’s not done slashing taxes yet. Her goal is a 0% individual income tax rate by the end of this year. No income tax. With the additional budget surplus, the result of her spending cuts, she has allocated the extra dollars towards k-12 education by $1 billion, and since Iowa is a rural state, she increased funding for broadband by $100 million. She has started apprenticeship programs to address Iowa’s teacher and healthcare worker shortages. And she has bolstered funding for public safety too.
A dedicated supply sider, whose stated belief is that only through spending cuts and deregulation, governments can hope to stimulate economic growth, she has presided over a dramatic addition in the number of Iowan small business startups.
Federalism
She has shrunk government agencies while streamlining, restructuring and realigning them to provide services more efficiently for Iowans. As Reagan once said running for office, that he wanted to fundamentally change the individual’s role in their relationship to the state, there’s a whole page on her website describing her proposals to alter Iowa’s administrative institutions. Among other innovations, she suggests,
“Strategically aligning executive branch structure, operations, and personnel to elevate service, improve efficiency, and reduce the total number of cabinet-level departments from 37 to 16.”
And also,
“Aligning regionally operated Community Based Corrections programs within the Department of Corrections to strengthen the corrections system statewide, drive evidence-based outcomes, and improve recidivism and public safety.”
And some of her “key alignment proposals” are to
“Centralize similar programs that currently exist across several agencies into a single department with the resources, experience, and subject matter expertise to achieve the best outcomes for Iowans.”
And,
“Community Based Corrections is proposed to merge with the Department of Corrections, creating operational consistency statewide that improves public safety and equal justice.”
And,
“The Board of Educational Examiners, College Student Aid Commission, STEM Advisory Council, and other education-related services are proposed to align with the Department of Education to better support students across Iowa’s education continuum.”
Furthermore she has cut down on the administrative bloat in state colleges, stipulating that public money allocated to them is not permitted to go towards more wasteful administration. She has cracked down on the collective bargaining power of monopolistic public unions too, capping the salaries they can demand at 3%.
Gatekeeper of the Open Society
She has reformed occupational licensing, freeing Iowa’s professions to open competition and expanding opportunities for emergent market competitors. Improving civil liberties, she has extended the right to vote to 40,000 felons, according to the NAACP. Drawing on her own experiences with alcoholism and her drunk driving arrests, it wasn’t the only time she opposed other Republicans in the state legislature to pass her own legislation—
“‘It boils down to our fundamental belief in redemption and second chances,’ Reynolds said before signing the order. ‘It’s a big step for so many on the road to redemption and proving to themselves and maybe to others that their crimes or convictions do not define them.’
Some of Reynolds’ fellow Republicans opposed the move, saying they think some crimes are irredeemable and that felons who owe restitution to victims must pay it before getting their rights back. Such repayment schemes have been viewed by some as a poll tax that would prevent those who cannot afford repayment from ever voting.” (Quoted from PBS Thirteen/ David Pitt ~ the Associated Press)
And as I mentioned in an earlier post, she passed new legislation towards privatizing education, provisioning families with $7500 each in education savings accounts, which also entailed challenging other Iowa Republicans. In a Cato forum I watched she stated, she thinks it’s absolutely wrong that only wealthy parents have the choice to send their kids to private schools. Whether it’s for religious reasons, or because a child is being bullied or for whatever reason, she says she thinks all families, regardless of their income status, should have the opportunity to send their child to a school of their choice. She has also sought to secure shareholder capitalism against the threat of (ESG, “Environment and Social Governance,” a kind of stakeholder capitalism, a nefarious ideology which presumes to distort the free market price mechanism, subordinating markets to the collectivistic left progressive ends of “sustainability” and “social justice”) with her advocacy against and her implicit proposals to stop its advance with legislation limiting businesses’ capacity to operate as ideological activist groups, thereby securing the spontaneous order of the market and the freedom of the individual to make their own choices within it.
Republicanism
Woe to whomever would let her wholesome mien or her folksy accent cause one to underestimate her. This midwesterner is very sharp. She has innovative and practical future-oriented, growth-oriented ideas. She has moral courage and a genuine desire to serve the public. While not a pragmatist, she is moreover not socially divisive or antagonistic, making her dissimilar to Ron desantis for example. Indeed, she couldn’t be further from wanting to inflict pain on leftists for her own aggrandizement, but decidedly her goal is only to limit the role of government in our lives that accords with her classical liberal sense of equal justice, promoting fairness as a moral public good, while expanding economic opportunity too, by limiting government intervention in the market allowing people the widest latitude to innovate and compete freely. A genuine desire to serve the public the way she thinks best, without pitting the grievances of one identity group against another, is balanced with a prudent sensibility not to be cruel to whomever opposes her, integral to the generosity and humility of her nature.
Reynolds has the courage of her convictions like Thatcher, known in Britain as a “conviction politician,” as well as she possesses Maggie’s intelligence, yet she has the affability and warmth of Ronald Reagan. It doesn’t surprise me that as Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, Reynolds was the first female Iowa governor—both conservatives. I think women as opposed to men might be more suited to fiscal responsibility. Women know how to budget better. I can’t tell you the amount of husbands I’ve rang up at the grocery store now who, suddenly conjuring up a pocketful of coupons, have told me their wives would kill them if they forgot them. Speaking of the grocery store, as Thatcher, who would ever since be known as a “grocer’s daughter” in classist Britain, grew up working in her father’s grocery store—Reynolds used to work the night shift at a local supermarket in Iowa. In my experience working in a grocery store, one is struck by the average person’s capacity and willingness to manage their own money and their self-evident desire to spend their money how they like, without being instructed how. Such a context, I would argue, is a great window through which to perceive the fiscally conservative instincts of the ordinary person.
She even dresses a little like Thatcher but without pretending to, unlike phony Liz Truss. Bows, double breasted jackets, pearls.
Chris Kleponis/ UPI
American Enterprise Institute
With her geniality, with her refined and conscientious, yet decided, approach to conserving the fundamental liberty of the private citizen as well as promoting the rational self-interest of the consumer, Kim Reynolds embodies at once the best qualities of both the great communicator and the iron lady, highly disciplined, single-minded, principled and industrious, mild-mannered, down-to-earth, polite, inoffensive, and warm.
Kim Reynolds would be not the decent restrained leadership this coarsely factional country deserves, but she would be the deregulatory shock therapy it needs. Whether the majority of this rusticating democracy likes it or not.
And she should totally run for president.
—Jay
Good post. I like the newsworthiness and relative brevity. Thanks
How long has she been governor?