The Budget

Cut our way out?

Let’s say you were the budget writer for the state studying a breakdown of the types of programs we fund in our state’s $36.9 billion two-year budget for ongoing operations. As you can see, a majority is spent in education and human services:

Now let’s say you wanted to close the budget shortfall entirely through cuts.

You couldn’t simply adopt a 25 percent across-the-board cut because of the following restrictions:

Basic K-12 education funding is protected by the state constitution.

Medical Assistance - i.e. Medicaid - is protected by the federal government.

Debt service and corrections are expenditures that the state either cannot default or has to make for the safety of the population.

Backing these mandatory funds out of the equation leaves about 40 percent of the budget left – which is where cuts must come from to close the shortfall.

In other words, you’d need to cut $8.3 billion not from $33 billion, but from $18.5 billion.

As a budget writer, you’ll need to study these numbers in order to appreciate the scope of the challenge you’re about to face. And you’ll quickly realize that you aren’t going to find some secret, wasteful, unsupported public programs of a large enough magnitude to balance the budget without very serious cuts to essential services.

For example, you might notice that if you eliminated our entire state’s correctional system, our entire higher education system, all care for our seniors, and all care for those with developmental disabilities – that would almost bridge the shortfall. 

Do you want the state to ignore the vulnerable and get out of the public safety and higher education businesses altogether? Probably not.  But the cuts have to come from somewhere.

The initial, all-cuts budget proposed in December makes significant cuts to human services and health care.

Examples of the initial budget proposal’s cuts include:

Reducing health coverage for up to 40,000 low-income people

Eliminating housing, medical care and drug and alcohol treatment for 27,500 low-income individuals with physical and mental disabilities

Eliminating adult day health care for 1,900 disabled and elderly people

Eliminating the universal vaccine program

Cutting community mental health treatment

The Legislature is still examining this initial all-cuts proposal, which is based on the premise that increasing revenue in an economic downturn hampers our economic revival.

This is a legitimate concern, but what if it unwittingly produces exactly the result it was designed to avoid?

Continue to "Short-term savings, long-term costs"