Over the last 3 years, Idaho's revenues have declined, and the budget has shrunk with them, on account of the constitutional requirement for a balanced budget. Rather than seek new revenue sources, the legislature and Governor have chosen to simply cut the budget.
Now that revenues are growing again, what will be the choice? Restore the budget cuts? Or keep the reduced budgets and lower taxes. Governor Otter seems to be proposing a bit of both.
For government haters, and in Idaho that means the folks running the government, who get their jobs from the government, who get their health care from the government, who get retirement benefits from the government, the choice is clear. Keep government small, don't expand anything. Every contraction in revenues means government must shrink; expansion of revenues means government must stay shrunk.
And to hell with the people hurt by the cut back in services. And school kids. And higher education. There's a reason Idaho sucks in almost every category of well being for the populace. See the preceding paragraph.
2 comments:
Hopefully, Idaho will resist pressures to expand government the same way so many other states have as they now grapple with unsustainable financial burdens. A little more balance in such blog posts would be nice.
Well, that's were we disagree. I don't think our financial burdens are unsustainable. We have the wherewithal to pay for our spending, but not the political will to do so.
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