From Wayne Cox, in Minnpost:
A reporter brought up a symmetry at Gov. Tim Pawlenty's news conference
Tuesday on the latest budget forecast: Pawlenty began as governor with
a projected $4.5 billion deficit — the same level it is today. While
the nation has yet to perfect a perpetual-motion machine, Minnesota
seems to have found a perpetual-deficit machine in Pawlenty.
But
isn't Pawlenty just a victim of being a governor during a recession?
Partly, but half of the projected deficit in the upcoming biennium is
not from the declining economy but from a holdover projected deficit he
refused to deal with in earlier years. He has consistently vetoed bills
that would have restored revenues to bring budgets into balance into
the future.
Pawlenty has taken to chiding the federal
government for deficit spending, saying it should learn from governors
who have to enact balanced budgets. One can only hope his phone will
be busy when the feds call for advice, for Pawlenty is famous for
producing budgets that allow the books to balance in the short run by
creating larger deficits in the future.
Long-term effects
His
proposed budget this year would take tobacco-settlement revenues that
would otherwise be collected over many years in the future, spend them
now, and leave a large hole for the future. His proposal to shift some
state education payments to just outside the window of this biennium
would deepen the projected deficit in the subsequent biennium. His
proposal to cut corporate taxes without paying for it creates a big
budget hole in future years.
Last week the Legislature called
his bluff and enacted a law requiring adoption this year of a balanced
budget not only for the upcoming biennium but for the following
biennium as well. Pawlenty signed the law Monday. Living up to it will
be much harder. Pawlenty no doubt believes a "no new taxes" stamp on
his passport is required for entry onto the Republican presidential
nomination train. Yet eliminating a $10 billion, four-year projected
deficit without new taxes and without gimmicks will require Pawlenty to
lay bare the full extent to which he would reduce services.
So
far this year, Minnesota has only seen the previews: 85,000 households
losing their health coverage; courts faced with leaving certain crimes
unprosecuted through lack of resources; and citizens faced with reduced
police and library services.
Main attraction coming soon
Opening
two weeks from now will be the main attraction, his new plan: the
full-length, uncut, R-rated "Pawlenty Budget Horror Picture Show."
In
a speech in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, Pawlenty called for a
federal balanced-budget amendment. If there had been such an amendment,
of course, the federal government would not have had the main tool it
used to get the country out of the Great Depression, nor the means to
fight World War II, nor the means to adopt the newly enacted federal
recovery act that the Federal Reserve chairman said is essential to
pulling the country out of the current deep recession and that the
state economist says will prevent the loss of 45,000 jobs here in
Minnesota.
In leaving Minnesota with perpetual deficits, maybe
Pawlenty is just getting in some practice for what he hopes will be his
next gig.
Wayne Cox is executive director of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice.
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