Skip broke the news (on the Grok) about New Hampshire State Government’s department heads making budget requests that would increase state spending by 26% in 2013. If you had any delusions about who or what state agencies represent, you just got your answer.
It ain’t you. It’s them.
In the current economy, with no regard for whose money they are spending, incoming governor Maggie Hassan would have to raise taxes and fees by at least 19% to fill all the requests. AFP-NH estimates that this would extract around 700 million dollars from the people of New Hampshire to pay for new spending that would never go away. So that’s 700 million from every budget henceforth and anon, plus new new spending each budget there after….these are Democrats if you recall, there is no enough when it comes to spending your money.
And that $700, 000,000.00 (million) is ironically close to another sum we readily associate with New Hampshire Democrats.
You may recall how the Democrats tried to spin their 800 million dollar deficit as a myth? In the process of doing so Democrat House finance committee member Cindy Rosenwald let the deficit cat out of the left-wing narrative bag. Of the Democrats $802 Million in one time spending she said…
The Democratic majority knew all along it would not continue, and that budget cuts would have to be made during the following biennium so that there would not be a deficit.
Maggie Hassan was a member of that New Hampshire Democrat majority. So she knew then that the state budget could not support the extra $800 million Democrats spent despite New Hampshire not having the revenue to replace it in the following budget cycle. Cuts would have to be made, to quote Ms .Rosenwald, so that there would not be a deficit.
Two short years later the economy is not a whole lot better than it was then. The Federal government’s spending and regulatory addictions have put pressure on every state and every citizen, in every way imaginable. Quantitative easing has generated price inflation keeping energy prices high despite lower demand, and driving food inflation upward–taking more from stagnating wages for what used to cost much less. So the best we could say about New Hampshire’s economy is that it is at least stable, creeping along, like a man trapped in the desert who is running low on water.
The Department heads response, based presumably on the assumption that with a Democrat governor and Democrat budget writers in the state house that the sky is the limit, was to ask for the rest of our water and some blood to go with it. That tells you plenty about Democrats and the government bureaucracy all by itself. F-the taxpayers, we need to grow our agencies while the iron is hot!
But where’s the money?
Democrats admit that we didn’t have the 800 million, so where will we get the 700 million? That is a question Maggie Hassan is trying to squirm her way around, one that will begin to itch like a dry wool sweater after the Democrat house budget wranglers add taxes, fees, and more spending to the mix. It is who they are. It is what they are. It is what they do and will do. And I have no delusions nor should you. They will grow government first, even if it means accounting gymnastics, PR campaings, or simply bonding all their spending, so they can kick the tax increase can down the road a few years someone else to try and deal with.
That is what they did from 2007-2010. Republicans were left to clean up that mess. That mess that Ms. Rosenwald admitted to. And that is what they will try to do again. Which leaves us with but one final question. Will the slim majority of Republican state Senators have the backbone to stop it?
It is not a wager I would back with anything of value, and certainly not with millions of taxpayers dollars. But I would be happy to be wrong about that.
