An Accomplishment To Be Proud Of?

During the press conference yesterday, announcing the budget deal, Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher boasted that they had "balanced the budget". However is that really an accomplishment to be proud of?

Remember the headlines two years ago - the ones that excitedly reported a $2.2 billion dollar budget surplus? Remember all of the plans that many, including the Governor, had for spending all that money? Sure you say, but no one expected the economy to take such a sharp downturn...

Not so fast with that excuse my friends. Some legislators actually called for budgetary restraint over a year ago.

Friends and Neighbors,

The biggest news item from the State Capitol this week was that the projected budget surplus remained well above the $2 billion mark, even though it dropped a fraction of a percent from earlier forecasts. Earlier this session I explained how "a fraction" in state budget terms can actually be a huge amount of money, and that is true in this case. State economists lowered their surplus projection by $7 million,which to any of us is a fortune. But in terms of a $31.5 billion state budget, it's relative pocket change.

How will this affect the rest of the session? Probably not a whole lot. The forecast is that we will have just shy of $34 billion to spend, and that is the number we will use to set the state budget. The economists warned that there is still an amount of uncertainty in the economy (witness this week's unexpected fall in the stock market) and we need to be prudent with spending and not leave ourselves in a tough situation if the economy takes a sudden downturn.

Sadly, instead of listening to that wise council, the legislature went on a spending spree that put us in a situation where they had to depend on 11th hour negotiations in order to balance the budget in light of such an "unexpected" shortfall.

Given that this DFL led legislature took us from a $2.2 billion dollar budget surplus to nearly 1 Billion in debt, the news that they were able to "balance the budget" is not something to be proud of. It should be something that the voters take a long hard look at come November.