I guess Nashua Democrat Cindy Rosenwald’s Great White Whale still haunts her. On Feb 6th, 2015, Cindy wrote a letter to the Rosenwald-friendly Nashua Telegraph outlining how there never was an $800 Million dollar deficit left by NH Democrats. Republicans made it up.
A future children’s book on the so-called fairy tale would not be surprising.
The problem, at least for House Democrat Rosenwald, is that she already admitted the truth in writing, a fact from which we will never allow her to run away.
As the chair of House Finance in the bread-and-butter days of a Democrat majority legislature (with a Democrat governor), Rosenwald participated in what had been an ongoing progressive spending spree. In 2008, when Obama was elected, his own giddy Democrat majority ordered Stimulus, parading ever larger sums of one-time Federal money to the states (to create jobs or something), which the New Hampshire Democrat majority used to expand the state budget even further.
By the end of the free ride, New Hampshire Democrats had spent themselves fiscally blind, having built up a budget that would need a lot more money in future years but with no existing revenue streams to replace it.
What to call the difference between the bigger budget and the lack of future revenue became a cottage industry.
It has been five years since, and Democrat Cindy Rosenwald still wants to talk about how that difference was not a deficit.
Let’s talk about that.
$800 Million missing Dollars by any other name
In a previous effort to convince the public that the NH Republicans had invented the “Deficit,” Rep. Rosenwald took to the Patch and explained it like this…
This extra money, $802 million in total, helped maintain essential safety net programs for vulnerable residents hit hard by the recession. The federal money was one-time assistance. 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.
“So that there would not be a deficit.”
I’m just going to throw this out there for contrast. If it read like this,
… The Republican 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.
…would that be an $800 Million dollar deficit?
Hold that thought.
Democrats created or expanded line items in the State budget and covered those new costs with the $800 million dollars in one-time-money they knew they would not have in the next budget cycle.
Whoever was in charge of the legislature in the next session would be responsible for making those cuts so that there would not be a deficit.
Life doesn’t begin until a Democrat says so and neither does a deficit.
“And it shall come to pass, knowing all along that it would not continue, that budget cuts must be made so that there would not be a deficit. Amen.” – Sacred Book of Rosenwald
Lucky for Democrats,”Budget Pro-choice” Republicans came along in 2011 and aborted $800 million dollars in spending from the previous budget. To quote Rosenwald, “cuts would have to be made,” and they were. I can only assume, to borrow from President Obama, it was so Democrats were not punished with a baby deficit.
But who would have thought doing what Democrats knew must be done would incite so much outrage?
For those who missed it or can’t recall, Ms. Rosenwald and New Hampshire Democrats, NGO’s, progressive non-profits, national left-wing media, local left-wing media, even the fricking leftist clergy in New Hampshire, each in their way screamed, cried, wailed, prayed, axe-ground, and chest pounded, day-in and day-out in opposition to budget cuts as if they never knew they needed to be made in the first place.
They never planned to cut the budget. They instead engaged in a narrative war, assuming they’d cling to enough power in the next legislature to control the money, the spending, and the language so that they could hide what they had done. They were wrong. They got swept out of office in historical fashion leaving an $800 million dollar difference between the new spending they wanted to keep and revenue they had not yet collected.
There was no way to hide it or sweep it under the rug, so they tried to shout it down.
But Finance Chair Rosenwald, in a moment of honesty, publicly admitted the truth. Democrats used $800 million one-time money knowing there was no revenue to replace it. The difference would require cuts or new taxes, new fees, or broad-based sales or income tax to balance the budget in the next budget cycle.
So New Hampshire Democrats deliberately partied it up and ordered an $800 million dollar recurring annual bar tab with no way and no one to pay for it.
There’s a word for that.
The word is “Deficit.
