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.
The Post is clearly splitting hairs here. The fact is that Gov. Blunt kept a balanced budget at a time when the federal government was awash in a sea of red and most states were being crushed under the burden of recession. I think we owe it to Blunt for being tough and cutting spending, which is something most politicians preach but don’t practice.
Hurrah for political hackery!
I cannot believe that anyone would make up such hogwash to support their own agenda. It should be obvious that the facts and the real budgetary information will be made available. At this point, after four years of partisan fighting, I guess I should not be surprised at this spectacle.
Still, shame on the Post-Dispatch and shame on this editorial board. Today, Pulitizer turned over in his grade one more time.
Why is it that people who disagree with what the Post has to say uaually rebut Post editorials with name calling and nonrelevant arguments?
The editorial was about a Republican leader (as usual) claiming credit for a situation which was largely not of his making or an indirect result of a mistake he made. I see no argument made in the editorial about health insurance. I see no argument in the editorial about Blunt not being able to take advantage of a situation which was not of his making. The editorial was a simple explanation that, as usual, a Republican leader is claiming leadership of a situation not of his creation.
I refer back to the “glory” years of Ronald Reagan where he set records for deficit spending and his administrations gave us the S&L approximately $250,000,000,000 (billion) debacle as well as the Iran Contra “mistake”.
Then we get Bush fisical “restraint”, two wars, Enron and other business “success” stories and of course it’s the Democrats fault because they wouldn’t cooperate with our hero even though they were the MINORITY party for the first 6 years of the Bush fiasco. Now tell me who is splitting hairs and not giving due credit for services rendered? The Post is merely pointing out that Blunt took advantage of the situation, one that really didn’t require very much “toughness”.
Heck, I am still waiting for the report as to why Sen.(then State Auditor)McCaskill didn’t know anything about the $l,000,000 in outdated computers found in a warehouse after the 2004 election. I called the Auditor’s office and they said they would be issuing a report on it. Either they didn’t or the P.D. didn’t print it.
Not surprising that this paper would defend the absolute failures of the previous administration. Can you folks at the Dispatch refute the fact that Holden left the state saddling a $1.1 billion debt? Gov. Blunt took over the Governorship with a state budget in the red, and he’s leaving it in the black for the next administration. This hit-piece is yet another example of the sour-grapes mentality by biased editorial writers who can’t stomach the fact that conservative budgeting can lead to a balanced budget, with money left over for future years…without a tax increase.
Its hopeless for some of these people above, they are like blind parents who refuse to see wrong in their own children until its too late. Even then they are in denial of the truth that has been smacking them in the face before it got to such a destructive point.
What a slight of hand by the Post-Dispatch. Using the 2001 (FY 2002) numbers as the starting point for Blunt’s budget increases for mental health and education is sloppy and factually inaccurate. It’s a known fact that FY 2006 was Blunt’s first budget - and the Gov. increased both mental health and education funding significantly - increasing the later by 4.85 percent. The swollen budgets of FY’s 2002-2005 were the work of Bob Holden, who somehow managed to cut AND withhold funding for education, leaving office with a record of mismanagement and liberal spending. Indeed, it is the Post-Dispatch - not Blunt - that is fudging the figures.
mizzoualum06,
So you are saying that all these reports of what is really going concerning the financial condition of the State of Missouri are incorrect? The Post Dispatch are only reporting on the findings of what was truthfully found.
Who are you to say the findings are incorrect? Do you have some information that you can back up disproving these things that are FACTS?
By the way, no one from the “Governors Office have discredited these reports that are obviously accurate.
Did the Post ed-board not have the journalistic integrity to publish the governor’s rebuttal? Perhaps I missed it. You can link to it at:
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080808/OPINIONS/80807036/1006/OPINIONS
that is, you can link to it unless this left-leaning rag pulls this post