Maryland Conservatarian

As you may have heard, our Governor is proposing all kinds of tax increases and tax decreases in order to stem a significant so-called “structural deficit”. Here’s how he is explaining that at his official website: Budget Updates from Governor Martin O'Malley

“Over the last decade, our state government reduced revenue by $1 billion with an income tax cut, and then increased spending by $1.5 billion with the Thornton education plan – opening up a $1.7 billion hole.”

Now when he writes that “…our state government reduced revenue by $1 billion with an income tax cut…”, he doesn’t really mean that revenue is down a billion dollars (I’m assuming he means annually – he’s not clear on this). That would be absurd. Our State Budget in 1998 was nearly $16 billion dollars with $3.8 billion coming from Personal Income Taxes. In 2004, the budget was up to $22.7 billion, with Personal Income Taxes providing over $5 billion.

No, when he says it’s down by a billion dollars, he is using liberal-speak for reduced when compared to what might have been had tax rates not been cut and everything else was exactly the same.

His use of the phrase “our state government” also tactfully avoids calling out his fellow Democrats for the $1.5 billion increase in Thornton spending. Remember, Bob Ehrlich had vetoed the legislative action that removed the last hope of fiscal sanity involved with Thornton but was overridden. Our state government could always re-introduce a little fiscal restraint into all this but methinks that won’t play well with much of their electorate.

Obviously Maryland is taking in more money than ever before but, unremarkably, it is spending it even faster. Our fiscal problems aren’t because of “reduced revenue” nor is the increased spending solely to be placed at the feet of Thornton. That’s demagoguery – pure and simple.

With a special session coming up on October 29th, I encourage all to review the Governor’s proposal to eliminate this deficit…and I’d appreciate it if you would forward onto me any – and I mean even $1 worth – of proposed spending cuts found therein.