Some things in life are essential – beer, the MLB Network, caller ID – and some things aren’t – tofu, Jay Leno, the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.
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In tough times, we all have to make sacrifices, and it makes sense to start with nonessentials. So this recession will have to get a whole lot worse before I celebrate happy hour with a glass of water and the Soap Opera Channel, while fending off phone calls from special interest groups (“Did you see our executive director on Leno’s show last night?”) trying to connect me to my senator’s office so I can urge her to vote for a bailout of the tofu industry.
As for the state economic development department, I had convinced myself that, as a result of the current budget crisis, it was nearing the end of its wretched life. No longer, I was certain, would it be wasting tax dollars by studying things that didn’t need to be studied, planning things that were never going to happen and trying to develop things that shouldn’t be developed.
The reason I felt the end was near for DECD (I just realized that if you changed the word ”Community” in the department’s name to “Annoying,” the new acronym would be “DEAD”) was because top officials were finally talking as if they planned to get rid of some of the worthless pustules growing on the body of Maine’s government.
“We have to look at eliminating programs,” Democratic state Rep. Emily Cain, co-chair of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, told Capitol News Service in July.
Democratic state Sen. Bill Diamond, the committee’s other co-chair, made a similar pronouncement in the Maine Sunday Telegram that same month. “We have to do it,” Diamond said. “We don’t have any choice.”
“We’re going to have to eliminate entire programs or agencies,” Democratic state Sen. Margaret Craven, a member of Appropriations, told the Lewiston Sun Journal in August.
In September, the Sun Journal quoted Republican state Rep. Sawin Millett, likewise a member of the budget-writing committee, as saying, “[W]e cannot preserve and protect funding for every program we now fund.” Capitol News reported that “whole programs will need to be eliminated,” citing GOP Sen. Richard Rosen, who also sits on Appropriations, as its source.
Measure a coffin for the economic development bureaucracy, I thought. Pick out a burial plot.
My reasoning in assuming DECD would be targeted by the budget cutters seemed sound. The department doesn’t actually do anything, so if it ceased to exist, nobody would lose their food stamps, heating assistance or other life-sustaining benefits. It’s hard to imagine low-income moms and unemployed dads picketing the State House to restore funding for a bunch of policy wonks.
And if the department got the ax, could tofu and Leno be far behind?
But my carefully constructed scenario crumbled like recent state revenue projections. When Democratic Gov. John Baldacci released his supplemental budget on Dec. 18, not only didn’t DECD become DEAD, neither did any other government agency.
“[I]t would have been much too severe to close the entire gap with cuts alone,” said Baldacci, explaining why he preferred to use accounting gimmicks to cover the shortfall. “These one-time tools are a better alternative than additional, painful cuts.”
Among the other survivors of this round of reductions was a state agency that had predicted it could not possibly survive another round of reductions. Maine Department of Health and Human Services commissioner Brenda Harvey warned the Appropriations Committee in September that, “we are at the core of our operations,” and before further reductions could be made, legislators and the governor would have to decide “what services we are no longer going to offer.”
The Baldacci budget reduced DHHS spending by almost $68 million, but didn’t actually get rid of anything.
“Rather than wholesale elimination of programs,” Harvey announced on Dec. 18, “we have made reductions in the quantity of service and reimbursement rates.”
Please ignore her earlier statement about that being impossible.
Like the economic development drones, much of the human services bureaucracy could be eliminated without noticeable impact on humans or services. The department already has a computer to mess up Medicaid. Keeping people around to add to the confusion seems redundant.
Likewise, the Department of Education could shed the $100 million it spends on administrators who have absolutely nothing to do with teaching anybody anything. The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife could manage without everybody who doesn’t have clothing smeared with fish scales or bear entrails. And the state court system could streamline operations by merging the District and Superior courts, thereby requiring any judge to hear any case.
That would get us closer to funding just the essentials.
Although, I don’t see any money in there for beer.
My caller ID still works, so if you want to reach me, you’ll have to e-mail aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Democrats CUT? Cut programs. As likely to see an eagle burrow in the ground and a gopher soaring across the sky.
John,
They won’t use the word cut, they will use phrases like “net spending cut” or “saved or created” or “acted stupidly” or “man caused disaster” or “undocumented workers” or “the system worked”
Word games, fear mongering, demonizing anyone who questions them, and creating a ruling class, the fundamental values of a democrat.
What if there was a democrat in power who could rationalize? It’s always ( CUT THROAT ) I suggest CUT IT OUT, quit complaining and be truthful to taxpayers.
I forgot these 10 items that the ruling class have gravitated towards!
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
(Kelo v. City of New London decided by the Supreme Court involving the use of eminent domain)
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
(see state and Federal Tax Brackets)
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
(death Tax)
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
(Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation of their property)
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
(Federal Reserve Act of 1913, TARP)
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
(Federal Communications Commission, 1934, Fairness Doctrine, coming soon)
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
(Anti-trust Acts, 1902 Obama Motors, AKA GM)
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
(Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healy Acts, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938)
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
( Zoning, Government subsidies favor large agribusinesses, school consolidation)
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
(Gradual shift from private education to state funded education began in the New England States in the early 1800s)
Anybody no where they come from?
There is a passage from Rousseau that captures the root of the problem. I will paraphrase because I can’t locate the passage right now. It goes WHEN THE GOVERNMENT GRANTS A LUXURY IT SOON BECOMES A NECESSITY AND IT CANNOT BE TAKEN BACK. This is the principle at work in Maine that Al Diamon has illustrated so well in the piece above. The politicians we have cannot cut back, especially Democrats. If they remove a program or law they will replace it with something even larger that will be no net gain in governemnt reduction. Keep in mind that Dirigo Health, that failed boondoggle, will be with us forever. There is the danger in the new proposed health insurance drive by the Democrat Party, because no matter how badly run, expensive, cruel, wasteful, short sighted, freedom stealing, numb, unjustly taxatious, unresponsive, economically misguided, or just plain outrageous in other ways, we will never get rid of it. We will not. Simple enough. Politicians intent on growing government have this Rousseauian principle in their pockets. Just get the program in and it wont be gotten rid of. Here in MaIne and the US It will secure the Democrat party in power for a century. Programs create constituencies that fight energetically to preserve them. Professor Frary is right with his amusing examples. Hutch and Phill are correct too. Government is as transparent as a foot thick concrete wall. We are peasants. We are the clay. The state and Federal governments are the potters.
How true it all is Bill, and I must say that your acknowledgement of Mr. Diamon’s and Mr. Frary’s good work is commendable.
Once again, it seems as though both Democrats AND Republicans were quoted as advocating cuts. How is this a partisan issue? The Republicans on the national level are responsible for the economic mess we’re currently in.
Also Hutch, you could use more schooling, don’t ya no…..