Grant Bosse - "Hassan is Reviving Several of John Lynch's Budget Tricks" - Granite Grok

Grant Bosse – “Hassan is Reviving Several of John Lynch’s Budget Tricks”

Grant Bosse has a new piece out on Watching out for Budget Gimmicks.  There’s a brief history of “governors of budgets past,” and their serial inability to deliver both parts on time.  He then gets into the current Hassan half-budget for which part two is now nearing three-weeks past due.

Hassan is reviving several of John Lynch’s budget tricks. Lynch moved the entire Liquor Commission out of the General Fund, and then bragged about cutting General Fund spending. Hassan is taking $56 million in Board and Care revenue off the books in order to claim that her budget only increases General Fund spending by 7%. But we’re still spending that $56 million.

So all you citizens take this to heart.  If you plan to spend all the money you have, and just take 56 million out of your right pocket and put it in your left pocket, you just cut your spending by 56 million, even though you’re still going home with your pockets empty.

Grant also notes the 80 million Hassan intends to spend from (who cares it doesn’t exist anyway), and a ‘eyes bigger than stomach’ left-field figure on Medicare Enhancement taxes that Senator Chuck Morse, according to Bosse’s article, believes is 100 million dollars too high. (I hope anyone with a private malpractice fund at or near 100 million–or anyone with any fund for that matter–has  a long memory and is listening.)

A $180 million plus hole, right out of the gate she can’t seem to get through.  We’d like to think those two things are related.  The not being able to get the balance of the budget to the legislature, because she’s got a 180 million dollar hole that has unbalanced her budget.  But this is Maggie Hassan, and these are New Hampshire Democrats.   The sign out in front of the office should say 100 new taxes and fees and we still couldn’t prevent an 800 million dollar hole in the budget.

Democrats like to spend your money, recession, depression, they don’t give a damn.

On a related note, our prayers and condolences go out to family and friends of the man in Florida who was swallowed by the earth while in his own bed, when a sink-hole opened up underneath him.

There’s no way he could have seen that coming.  We in New Hampshire, however, have been here with many of the same Democrats  yanking on the levers of fiscal power.   We CAN see it coming.

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