SALEM -- Love it or hate it. Either way, get used to it.
The 36-year-old "kicker" tax rebate remains politically invincible -- no matter how loudly critics insist the Oregon-only law leaves the state's budget more unstable and does little to limit spending.
The Democrats who run the Oregon Legislature have little interest in picking a fight with voters who can't help but love it when small pieces of the state's income tax surplus land back in their pockets. This year's $402 million kicker, announced Wednesday and the first since 2007, will amount to $124 for the typical taxpayer.
But even if Democrats wanted to risk voters' ire, they'd have to fight kicker-loving Republicans first. Clawing the kicker back in any given year, or even floating a ballot measure to strip it from Oregon's constitution, would require a legislative supermajority.
As much as some legislative leaders might dream of that day, they'd rather spend their partisan capital on issues with wider reach, such as increasing the state's minimum wage or asking voters to raise billions of dollars in new corporate taxes next year.
"I would like to see somebody show me a path," said Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, chairman of the Senate's tax policy committee and a proponent of wider tax reform. "I don't see that right now."
House Minority Leader Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, was less diplomatic.
"If the Democrats want to lose their majority status quickly," he said, "they'd come after the kicker."
That's not to say kicker reform -- and its seemingly inevitable failure -- hasn't been a Capitol talking point for almost as long as the kicker's been in place.
With Oregon's budget still raw from the recession, Gov. Ted Kulongoski tried mightily in 2010 to permanently turn the kicker into fuel for a rainy-day fund.
Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, personally administered the kill shot, telling Kulongoski his reform plan would have come too soon after controversial tax measures approved that year.
The Legislature last suspended the personal kicker in 1993 -- well before voters enshrined it in the constitution in 2000. (Read about the kicker's history here.)
Voters in 2012 agreed to permanently divert a separate, corporate-tax kicker to primary schools. But that was an easier message to sell: Corporate rebates typically favored out-of-state companies, state statistics showed.
"Great marketing campaign," McLane said dryly.
Rep. Tobias Read, D-Beaverton, was mindful of that history when he tried to push through a similar, one-time measure this May. At the time, state economists had released a forecast saying the kicker might top $470 million.
Read, preparing to announce a campaign for state treasurer, wanted to divide the money between the state's rainy-day fund and its K-12 schools and universities.
"We have significant gaps in our education system and reserve funds," Read said.
But Capitol insiders say his plan was seen as a political gesture and deemed dead on arrival.
"Any time you have discussion about the short term versus the long run, the short term is in a stronger position. You can taste and touch it," Read said. "There's no question people would like to have a tax credit. But the question is whether those tax credits do more for the state, if they're aggregated, because they allow us to retain teachers and keep schools open."
Kicker critics have long complained about who benefits. Kicker rebates mostly favor wealthy Oregonians, deemed least likely by state economists to spend their newfound largesse and help the economy. Critics also point out that Oregon's operating budget has continued to swell just like other states' budgets, kicker or no.
But they especially remember what happened in 2007. That year, the personal kicker sent back $1.1 billion. Months later, the Great Recession began carving hundreds of millions of dollars from Oregon's budget.
"It's good for giving money back to taxpayers," said Jim Moore, political science professor at Pacific University. "But it's bad for public policy. The government can't plan on what money it's going to have coming in."
Kicker supporters, meanwhile, insist lawmakers don't need to hold back kicker cash to insulate the state's economy against downturns. But that could also mean spending less on schools and social services.
"There's no reason why Oregon can't have a bigger ending balance," said McLane, who worries that kicker money diverted to a rainy-day fund wouldn't be walled off in case of emergency. "The issue isn't whether it's prudent to have savings. The issue is the public trust."
Bill Conerly, an economist with the libertarian-leaning Cascade Policy Institute, said he's been hearing the same debate since Gov. John Kitzhaber's first term more than 20 years ago.
"Nothing happened," he said. "I think the status quo has the home-court advantage."
-- Denis C. Theriault
503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX