It made front-page headlines in today’s Nevada Appeal: “Lawmakers looking for ways to cover budget cuts.” Another headline in today’s Reno Gazette-Journal announced: “Lawmakers begin making cuts in budget.” The only problem: Neither is true.
Republicans in Washington have faced this problem for years, and Republicans in Nevada better get their act together and fight this at every opportunity…pronto!
Words mean stuff. And calling a cut which is not a cut a cut puts those who are fiscally conservative at a severe rhetorical disadvantage. Here’s what is really going on, and anytime any of you see or hear any of this “cut” talk in the MSM (mainstream media), you should politely call or write and ask to correct the record.
The Nevada budget approved during the 2005 Legislature was just under $5.8 billion. The budget PROPOSED by Gov. Gibbons/Guinn at the start of the 2007 session was just over $6.8 billion. In other words, the governor was asking for a little over $1 billion in NEW SPENDING.
Alas, a funny thing happened on the way to the spending trough. Projections indicate that the economy is slowing down and the state won’t be receiving as much money as originally thought. So instead of asking for over $1 billion in new spending, the governor is *only* going to be asking for an additional $930 million in NEW SPENDING.
Make no mistake, this is NOT a “cut” in the existing budget. It is merely a reduction in the proposed INCREASE. This is only a “cut” if you are a liberal or a Democrat; but I repeat myself. Republicans need to point this out over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Posted on March 31st, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
Nice! We rather appreciated the website