We watch with amusement as the legislature attempts again to reconcile it’s bad fiscal manners, elbows on the table, slurping soup, and reaching across each others plates as they huddle over another last minute committee of conference. At the top of the menu is the budget, which is a coarse left over from last year that no one can stomach, or manage to keep down.
At the heart of the debate, as always, is the cost of government, and how to pay for it, with cutting those costs painfully low on the list of priorities–more a position of last resort if, you know, they fail to come up with a more diplomatic way to separate residents from their dollars. And that should concern everyone. Government is expensive, and hard working people have to give up part of their livelihoods to support it. And while some government is necessary–very little I must point out–it should be even more concerning that the people making the most noise are the ones looking for a way to pay for more of it. This is not indicative of a thought process focused on keeping more of your money in your pocket. It is evidence of a commitment to expanding costs without regard for how to pay for them–the very mission statement of the past two democrat run legislatures.
So how much more government do you think we’ll need?
No liberal can or will answer that question because they know the next question is, "well then how will we pay for that?" This is why they had to imagine revenue to make the spending appear within our means.
Has New Hampshire figured out the shell game yet? We may not know until November. But keep this one additional point in mind. The Granite State already has 6.5 Billion dollars in unfunded pension liabilities. Every new state employee adds to that burden. Every employee we try to keep at the state or local level that we never could afford in the first place, is one we are leading down a primrose path–that money does not exist and there is no reason to believe it ever will. Or are you suggesting that there is 7 billion in untapped wealth waiting to be mined?
We’ve not yet had a legislature in recent memory that has been willing to face this problem head on lead by either party. But only the democrats have gone out of their way to make it worse. We need to clean House, and then we need to bite the bullet. State spending is unsustainable. The course of the economy under Obama has us–at best–on a long slow arc of mediocrity if we don’t in fact plummet off a cliff tied to the federal debt he and the democrats have amassed. So it’s time to elect more people in New Hampshire, dedicated to states rights and smaller government, who will make some hard choices and unhitch us from the federal feeding trough and our own shortsightedness so that if (or when) the troubles begin anew, we’ll have a better chance of standing on our own two feet.
Cross Posted at NH Insider
