Wednesday editorial: Fudging figures
With less than six months remaining in office, Gov. Matt Blunt and his administration are hard at work framing and burnishing their legacy.
They’ve been boasting about how well Mr. Blunt managed the state budget. In a press release issued last week, they claim that through “fiscal restraint, spending discipline and responsible stewardship of Missouri tax dollars,” Mr. Blunt “turned a $1.1 billion deficit into three straight surpluses without raising taxes.”
All of this could be chalked up as political puffery if it weren’t so vital for Missourians to understand the realities of the state budget. And the reality, to put it kindly, is that Mr. Blunt’s claims are misleading.
The governor did not inherit a $1.1 billion deficit. He didn’t inherit any deficit at all. When Mr. Blunt took office in January 2005, the state budget was balanced. It remained so through the fiscal year that ended in June of that year.
The $1.1 billion to which Mr. Blunt refers was not a shortfall in funds that were needed to meet budgeted expenses; it was the difference between what his state agencies had requested in their budget proposals and the amounts they received at the end of the budgeting process.
That process is a negotiation involving balancing the needs and interests of the people. Agencies typically start out asking for more money than they expect to get. Would you say your family incurred a $5 deficit if your son asked for a $10 allowance and you only gave him $5?
Then there’s Mr. Blunt’s claim to have produced three straight surpluses. The Missouri Budget Project is a liberal-leaning non-profit advocacy group that closely tracks and analyzes state government funding issues. In a recent report, the group demonstrated that the state spent more than it took in for each of the years that the governor claims a “surplus.”
It’s true that the state ended each year with unspent funds. But that was mainly because of large cuts in spending for health care for the poor (nearly $200 million during Mr. Blunt’s first year), along with the “one-time availability” of a large chunk of federal money.
Mr. Blunt says his administration built up a pot of $833 million in unspent funds. He warns that “some politicians are salivating over the surplus as they announce political plans to deplete it by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on taxpayer-subsidized welfare.”
That claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny. First of all, $502 million of the supposed $833 million surplus already is committed to meeting expenses in the current budget year. Of the $331.8 million balance of the “unspent” dollars, the governor’s own budget office estimates that most of it is committed to the next budget year, leaving only about $60.8 million by fiscal 2011. And $60.8 million is a lot less than $833 million — about 93 percent less.
The reality is this: Mr. Blunt inherited a tight state budget. He kept it in balance by cutting health care to the poor. His predecessor, Gov. Bob Holden, also inherited a tight state budget in 2001. He kept it in balance by cutting higher education funding. Mr. Blunt did very little to rectify those cuts. Today, Missouri colleges and universities receive 11 percent less state funding (adjusted for inflation) than they received in 2001.
Mr. Blunt did put more money into funding for elementary and secondary eduction — 4.85 percent more than in 2001.
On the other hand, spending on mental health services has fallen 7.57 percent in the same period.
The next governor won’t find the going any easier. By 2011, tax cuts enacted during the past two years will reduce state revenue by between $186.3 million and $263.8 million a year. Add to that a state economy that’s losing jobs, and the picture hardly is rosy.
This is more than just a matter of spin. To the extent that it prevents Missourians from grasping hard truths at a time of hard choices, Mr. Blunt’s self-congratulatory rhetoric should be considered a public liability.
You want to talk about fudging figures? How about next time the lefties at the Post call for government healthcare, as you do on a regular basis, let’s hear how Massachusetts is doing with such a system. General facts: still no universal coverage, huge tax hikes, and severe budget problems.