MUTH’S TRUTHS

Gov. Gibbons appears a bit miffed at fiscal budget hawks such as myself who have a problem with his proposed $7 billion budget that increases government spending by 18 percent, including a bunch of new programs and virtually no program cuts whatsoever.

“The number of students in schools is increasing daily,” the governor tells Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon. “You can’t increase students without increasing your budget. The people who sit here and say you can do this and keep the budget constant would have you cutting in some other critical function. Show me where to cut.”

Where to begin?

First, this is the same argument former-Gov. Kenny Guinn made back in 2003, an argument which earned him the moniker of “RINO” - Republican In Name Only.

Secondly, there’s a difference, a big difference, between increasing the budget by 18 percent and increasing the budget by the rate of population growth and inflation. The bare minimum to qualify for fiscal restraint would seem to be in keeping the overall spending increases to around 13-15 percent. At most.

And don’t fall for this “the budget is still within the budget cap established by the 1979 law” flapdoodle. That law bases its cap on population growth and inflation for the last 25-some years. What we should be looking at is the population growth plus inflation figure since the last budget was approved in 2005 - the TASC formula.

Thirdly, Gov. Gibbons seems to be taking the position that there’s nothing but “critical” spending in his budget. I’m sorry, but $2 million for a children’s museum, as much as I love children’s museums, is not “critical” no matter how you slice it.

Lastly, the governor issued a challenge that he himself failed to meet when the shoe was on the other foot.

Four years ago, then-Rep. Gibbons was highly critical of then-Gov. Kenny Guinn’s proposed budget. “You have to justify to me why we haven’t looked at programs that need to be cut,” he said at the time…and then went on to list a few programs to cut.

Four years later, fiscal conservatives are urging Gov. Gibbons to do the same thing he told Gov. Guinn to do four years earlier. Why was cutting the budget four years ago “needed,” but not now? Especially with an additional $833 million in higher taxes and a budget surplus?

Jim Gibbons ran last year as a conservative candidate who would “save us money.” Four years ago he said there was plenty of room for budget cuts. But now he proposes to increase the budget by over a billion dollars and is peeved at conservatives who are singing from his same song sheet of four years ago.

It’s not the governor who should be mad at fiscal conservatives. It’s fiscal conservatives who should be mad at the governor. This budget has all the makings of the ol’ bait-and-switch.

Posted on January 24th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada