Green's meaningless tax 'pledge'

“I’ll make this pledge to all of you. Elect me as your Governor and Wisconsin’s tax burden will improve or I won’t run for re-election. I’ll keep my promise…or step aside for someone who will.” -- Rep. Mark Green.

That pledge, a keystone in Green's campaign for governor, sounds simple and straightforward. If you elect me and the state's tax situation doesn't improve, I won't run again.

The devil, as usual, is in the details. J.R. Ross of WisPolitics asked Green's campaign how he'd measure success, so he'd know whether he could run again or had to step down:

Green hasn't picked a method to make clear whether he lives up to his promise, campaign manager Mark Graul said. But he added voters will be smart enough to know whether their tax burden has gone down with Green in office.

"Give the taxpayers credit," Graul said.

Still, politicians have been known to find lots of ways to point out successes when it comes to Wisconsin's taxes.

According to the Tax Foundation, Wisconsin's state and local tax burden was fourth in the country when Dem Gov. Jim Doyle took office. The state dropped to No. 7 this year.

"It's not about our ranking. It's about our tax burden," Graul said.

What does that mean? Unless Wisconsin taxpayers are paying less in taxes in 2010, Green won't run again? Less minus inflation? Some other measurement?

It sounds like Green would run again and leave it up to the voters to decide whether he had kept his promise. But his promise is not to run again if the tax burden hasn't improved. How will he know? Take a poll and see what the voters think?

It sounds very much like a case of caveat voters -- let the voters beware of a candidate making glib promises.

That's especially true when the candidate has a record of breaking campaign promises in the past.

Green jumped on the term-limit bandwagon in 1998, when he first ran for Congress, and promised to serve only three terms. Like many other Republicans who got elected on that platform, he broke his word when the time came and ran for a fourth term.

In the unlikely event Green were to be elected in November, his 2010 re-election campaign would start the next day, and that "tax pledge" would be just one more forgotten campaign promise. That's a prediction you can take to the bank.