This week I want to address Utah’s budget crisis. At the Sutherland Institute we call the budget crisis “a glorious opportunity” – an opportunity to revisit the purpose of state government, an opportunity to rethink our values and our priorities as a people, and an opportunity to go on that much needed fiscal diet after years of getting fat and demanding.
Folks, this one is going to be painful. Utah’s State Legislature has insisted for months that cuts will be long and deep. Our very popular Governor – with Obama-like optimism – wants to preserve as much current spending as possible by raising taxes and bonding our futures.
Because the Governor refused to call a Special Session back in December, the current shortfalls seem even more dramatic. The shortfall for December alone was $100 million raising expected cuts from 10% to over 12%. By the time the scheduled budget projection comes out mid-February, the needed cuts will be about 15% — right at the level the State Legislature predicted last fall.
Budget cuts have been and will continue to be across-the-board, meaning that every agency and every program will be cut. Those decisions continue to be in the hands of the agency heads, not the State Legislature, although I expect that will change. What happens typically is that agencies come back to the Legislature with their recommendations of what to cut – and what to cut is usually the stuff that regular people would find unreasonable to place at the top of the list.
For instance, the Department of Human Services will talk about how Medicaid services to the poor will need to be cut drastically leaving women and children without health care – instead of talking about cutting layers of administrative fat or ancillary programs that have little to no impact on real human lives.
You might remember how this played out after Republicans took control of Congress in the 1994 election. By the time that the first big appropriations bill rolled around in the fall of 1995, House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Bill Clinton that his budget would arrive DOA. Gingrich would not allow an appropriations bill out of Congress looking to force Clinton’s hand to acquiesce to Republican budget cuts. Instead, the ever-shrewd Clinton said, fine, I’ll have to start closing the federal government. And what do you think he chose to close first? All of the Social Security offices, national parks, and federal monuments and museums. Clinton hit people where he knew they would feel the pain most – he did, after all, feel your pain…so he knew right where to strike. The rest is history.
Utah’s government agencies will begin this same process. And, unfortunately, our very popular Governor will be right there cheering them on. Huntsman will say, we can’t cut essential programs – “essential” meaning everything – and so we’ll have to raise taxes, go into debt, and continue with his ingenious “economic development” ideas to attract business to Utah – like giving money to Hollywood to make movies here and let everyone drink as much as they want while they’re here. After all, helping to get people drunk is good for Utah business!
There has been great hue and cry over how deep these current cuts will have to be. Many people in the know have said we’ll be going back three or four decades to the level of spending required to get to a balanced budget. They say to cut 15% in government spending places us squarely in the 1950s.
Actually, if the Utah State Legislature cuts 15% in government spending, we’ll only go back in time two years – state spending has increased over 25% in the last four years. It is time to cut, cut, and cut some more – and then make sure Governor FDR-Huntsman doesn’t use that award-winning smile and groovy hair to talk legislators into raising taxes or getting us deeper into debt to fund job projects.
I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.
