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I was amused by Republican Governor Pawlenty’s recent suggestion that we amend the state constitution to prohibit any expenditure greater than the revenue collected in the previous year.
Like so many of his ideas, it sounds on the surface to be a reasonable idea – hold the line of spending. But on closer examination, you have to wonder how serious the Governor is about enacting this proposal – since it requires a vote of the legislature (now controlled by the Democrats) and then a vote of the electorate in the coming general election. Even if both of those obstacles are overcome, this policy would not take effect until after Pawlenty leaves office. Accordingly, I have a few questions for the Governor.
- If this is such a great idea, why didn’t you think of it eight years ago when you first took office?
- If this proposal is – as you stated – “consistent with your philosophy and results”- why is the projected budget deficit twice as large as the one you started with eight years ago?
- In your eight years in office, have you ever presented the legislature with a budget that held to the previous year’s tax revenue?
- Are you prepared to submit such a budget to the legislature this coming January?
- During your eight year tenure, when the legislature sent you spending measures that exceeded the previous year’s revenue, why didn’t you use your veto pen to cut those bills down to size?
- When you had a chance to “unallot” earlier this year, why did you shift roughly $2 billion in spending into the next budget year making it the next Governor’s problem?
Shouldn’t you instead have honestly cut spending by $2 billion?
- Because our tax revenues are closely tied to the economy, couldn’t this proposed policy actually lead to excessive revenue and higher spending in times of economic growth (as they say, beware of unintended consequences)?
- And, finally, this gimmicky idea – designed to make you “look” like a fiscal conservative – wouldn’t have anything to do with your presidential ambitions, would it?
That is my two cents.
Tim Penny
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