BUDGETARY BLATHER IN AUGUSTA
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ACROSS THE BOARD AND OVER THE CLIFF
Here’s the problem: You have just retired. Your social security, pension, and savings income is ten percent below the salary to which you have grown accustomed.
Here’s the solution: A ten percent across the board cut in your expenses. Cut your property taxes, car payments, insurance charges, and health care costs along with expenditures on gas, restaurants, DVDs, oatmeal, truffles, filet mignon, champagne, beer, tobacco, chewing gum, bread, butter, shoe polish, bottled water, toilet paper, cologne, baked beans, Bhutanese buffalo knee casseroles, etc. by ten percent.
Inspired by our governor, I informed Farmington’s tax collector that I was cutting my taxes ten percent; notified my insurance agents that I was cutting premiums ten percent; notified my doctor and dentists that I needed to reduce their fees ten percent. No use. The heartless swine just told me to quit smoking and cut my beer and scotch rations. No understanding of non-prioritized budget cutting at all. I tried to get John Baldacci to explain the concept to them, but failed to get through to him.
Here’s the problem with the ten-percent solution. You may be able to spend less on gas but you may wish to spend more. Cologne and toilet paper are not equally necessary. Bread, butter and oatmeal are less expensive and more nutritious than truffles and filet mignon. You may enjoy beer more than chewing gum. You have to make a slew of separate decisions.
Here’s your challenge: Explain to me why a ten percent across the board cut in state government expenditures is not idiotic. I need help on this. I just don’t see it.
Near as I can see the case to be made for this method is the need to “share the pain”—equal shares of suffering for the useful and the useless, the efficient and the incompetent, the profitable and the profitless, the harmful and the harmless.
Not much of a case is it? Mind you, it may well be possible to achieve a ten percent cut in any state operation or program by raising the standard of efficiency. In the same way it may be possible for you to cut personal expenditures by paying closer attention to sales, coupons, and bargains. But devoting the same attention to enhanced efficiency in ineffective or counter-productive government programs and bureaus and operations as to useful and effective ones is plain silly.
Yet this is the approach now being advocated and adopted by Maine’s state government. This is far from unique. Politicians, both Republican and Democrat, often advocate such a method. It is easily explained to the public and has the flavor of “fairness.”
Our fiscal problems will not be solved by the Ten Percent Solution. Rep. Lance Harvell sat through a recent Appropriations Committee hearing and kept count of the number of time the phrase “over the cliff” was used—twenty-one. Our legislators are coming to the realization that, in the absence of fresh stimulus funds or a vigorous economic recovery, they may be facing a thirty percent cut in the next biennial budget. That is the cliff towards which the state is heading. Think about a 30% “across the board cut” and you can see the mindlessness of this approach.
The special interest groups who feed off the state have a simple solution. It’s the same solution every time. Raise taxes.
The argument against this is equally simple. We can’t afford a New Jersey government with a Maine income. Am I exaggerating? Here are some numbers to ponder. Maine’s median income in 2007: $50,740. New Jersey’s $67,142. Maine’s per capita government expenditures in 2006: $5,943.43. New Jersey’s: $6,197.83. Let me do the arithmetic for you. In 2006 Jerseyers earned $16,402 more than Mainers and paid just $254.40 more in taxes. And now we have people who look forward to Mainers drawing even with Jerseyers in taxes. No ideas of how we are to draw even with them in income. Apparently no interest either. “We want ours” represents the four corners of their argument. It goes no further.
Actually, it turns out that New Jersey can’t afford a New Jersey government either. Down there the new governor has announced his intention to cut the budget 25%. And has repeatedly made it clear that can be no new taxes. He has burned the bridges ahead of himself on that issue.
And no one has the cahones to go where the money really is and that is the excessive salaries and wages of state employees, including teachers.
Flam.and Php nice posts and one of the best explanations of the problem I have seen posted here.
To bad pm. appears to have missed your point!
Yes we can makes hose cuts. In many forms we have attempted to do so or eliminate positions down size consolidate and all the other associated ideas. Have they worked ? Obviously no!
Those things are easy,it is the difulcult long term solutons that are hard.
I use an example of myself.
In 91 I was laid off due to my position being eliminated. State savings $27,000.
(this is where cheers are heard)
I went back to work 6 mos. later in a position that was 7 pay rages lower and on first step of pay scale,
91 income about 13,000 less than 90. ( more cheers heard) actual savings to state about 14,000 for 91.
(Not so good but ok mild cheers.)
1995 after restarting a career recieving a promotion I was bumped to a lower job again due to a position being
eliminated(more cheers) .
Now two things these jobs were all necessary to be performed the actions and did great harm to a family of 5
and in the end both positions that had been eliminated were reinstated:
NOT ONE THING was accomplished but at the time everyone felt GOOD!
Because that was the easy things to do! So far noone has reached the the point of doing the hard things Republicans or Democrats.
Oh come on, does anyone really think this legislature would be able to cut 10%, much of which would come from programs they fought to create. Lord knows they will turn a blind eye to state employees and make sure they don't feel the pinch ther than the occasional furlough day.
Here's whats really happening - key members of the governors office and the legislature are in constant contact with officials in Augusta loking for a second stimulus payment, that is Plan A - the stimulus will be used to balance the budget and then we're allset for another 6 months (we hope). Plan B is in fact a tax increase, one penny if the stimulus money comes 2 pennies if it does not. Plan C is the 10% cut but only if A & B are not viable options.
Look for the legislature to avoid decisions until mid April which is the stimated time they will officially run out of money to operate our state. Until then they wil simply keep hoping that someone else can figure out a better solution.
Here's my solution - reduce the bumber of special assistants (formerly servers at mama's place) and use that money to create a nonpartisan systems review team (like accountants) to implement serious reduction inthe layers of management and in efficiencies they can find. reward those state employees whyo come up with create savings. Need a 10% reduction to stay afloat, ask for the team to find a 12% cut in state costs without sacrificing federal and other matching funds.
And here's hoping the firstr ecommendation would be to reduce the size of the legislature - the house by as many as 30 seats, still population driven, and the Senate to 2 seats per county, running countywide.
The winds of change are clearly blowing, time to change how we think.
I suspect that the other posters are more optimistic than I am about the representatives and senators in Augusta having the guts to cut spending in meaningful ways. Or their ability to come up with a creative solution that doesn't include a shell game of more taxes and fees and additional costs pushed down to the towns.
Personally I think we will be the first state in the nation to declare bancruptcy- DIRIGO!!!
I'd say the reason a governor could call for a 10% decrease across the board is that he believes there is at least 10% pork, and if he willing to actually admit that there is 10% pork then he probably believes there is actually 20% pork.
This is on existing programs, if he actually started to consider which programs should be eliminated than what would the figure of pork amount to, 30%, greater.
It is obvious also that the burden includes people, meaning aid directly to Maine people, old people, young people, disabled people, sick people, lazy people, unemployed people, people who need aid and those that don't deserve aid.
Tough choices and choices that bureaucrats and politicians cared little about when the money flowed, there was enough to spread around, but now as the teet runs dry, they have to be careful not to kill the cow that feeds them all.
They can tax us to death, we will see how that works for them. At least Baldacci has some concept of not actually killing the cow vs the dems in Augusta.
An independent out of state efficiency expert could find savings , which is why the state refuses to bring one in . Most large corporations use these services, which is probably why our socialist state will not . We'd be better off with the mob in charge as they know enough to only take a small cut from the till so that the business will stay in business.
1991=14,000
2008=68,812
The across the board method of cutting is an alternative to eliminating programs, departments, and services altogether, which is what has to be done if we're ever to "right-size" our state government. In today's political atmosphere, a Democrat governor is the ideal person to accomplish this right-sizing: any such proposal from a "Rethuglican" would be dead on arrival.
Too bad Johnny B is not up to the task. But I do give him a boatload of credit for holding the line against tax hikes. Three cheers for him on that.
Well said mainemom. Cheers how about on hold till end of session!
"Here’s the problem with the ten-percent solution. You may be able to spend less on gas but you may wish to spend more. Cologne and toilet paper are not equally necessary. Bread, butter and oatmeal are less expensive and more nutritious than truffles and filet mignon. You may enjoy beer more than chewing gum. You have to make a slew of separate decisions."
And there in lies the problem, Flam. Our families use rational thought to arrive at the decision of what to cut. If the bureaucracy is left to decide which 10% to cut, no desk jobs would be eliminated. middle management would get bonuses, and the guy who actually filled the pot holes would be in the unemployment line. Perhaps that is a means to an end, but there are obvious inefficiencies that could be addressed first - many more in some departments than others.
Quite right, JMcK. I acknowledged this is passing. And we agree on the normal bureaucratic methods of "cost reduction". Erode the foundations and maintain the paper-spewing superstructure. We may end up like 19th century Latin Amerian armies, i.e., one colonel to twenty-five privates.
Too bad Johnny B is not up to the task. But I do give him a boatload of credit for holding the line against tax hikes. Three cheers for him on that.
Except that his assertion that he won't raise taxes is not true, accurate, on-point, real, valid or concordant with facts.
See LD 1495 for the specifics.
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As I see it, there are two "advantages" to an across-the-board cut:
1. You don't have to think, and;
B. You don't have to be the bad guy.
Both advantages are irresistible to politicians, IMHO.