Majorie Smith cutting the budget reads like a prisoner forced to read a prepared statement just prior to their execution, that impugns their home country of ills for which they are about to be executed.
Then there is this.
"There are a lot of people who would not have believed the people in this room are supporting some of these cuts," [Smith] said.
(Quoted from this mornings Union Leader.)
Unfortunately there were more cuts available but then there were not. Democrats desperate to take whatever federal money Obama offered, to add to their three year spendapalooza–never in their wildest dreams thinking they’d actually have to cut back–got their buds nipped by Bud Fitch.
The original version of House Bill 1664 proposed $76 million in state cuts. Rules on federal stimulus funds that require continued spending on education programs forced the committee to walk away from $13 million in cuts to state colleges and UNH, and to drop a plan to save $19 million on aid to the state’s neediest schools.
Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch explained the stimulus funding rules to the committee. When the state took $164 million in education funds, he pointed out, "There were a big strings tied to this and you elected to take it."
What a relief. Remember..
"There are a lot of people who would not have believed the people in this room are supporting some of these cuts," [Smith] said
So that means that any shortfall that results from spending too much and thinking the feds would pay the check must now come out of the pockets of New Hampshire Families. You like that…New Hampshire Families? I borrowed that from the liberals who only care about taking money from New Hampshire families to pay for whatever their centrist little minds can think to spend it on.
As unpleasant as this all is–the taking away after all the giving–is that every person in New Hampshire who gets some benefit from the state, gets it at the expense of someone elses earnings. In the real world, that’s not a number that rises as quickly as the unions convince bureaucrats it will. So after years of bad management, we’re at a cross roads and someone has to pay. And when there is no money left to bleed from taxpayers–or they simply are no longer willing to bleed what they have, government has to give, and a change in management is likely.
So while it is nice to see them giving it the old college try, to quote Ms. Smith again…
"Cut us a little slack, because we’re trying to do the right thing."
..had you been all that concerned with doing the right thing in the first place, we very likley wouldn’t be in this mess at all.
Cross posted from NH Insider
