The long-term situation is relatively simple: as you may have noticed, we are perpetually spending more than we are making in revenue, leading to deficits every single biennium. Even in the last biennium, when there was a $2 billion “surplus,” it was mostly just a fluke due to one-time money. Every year, we’re spending too much, while bringing in too little revenue.
The situation will only get worse. As our population ages, the cost of social services will rise, while the number of Minnesotans contributing to the tax rolls will decline. Since our structural budget problems will only get worse, we need a permanent solution — not more budget gimmicks.
The solution is just as easy to understand as the problem. There are just three easy steps:
1. Reduce spending. We’re spending too much. We need to cut back on some of our state’s obligations, and find cost savings to reduce the cost of others. When possible, it may be worth spending money upfront to overhaul programs if it will create substantial savings in the long run.
2. Increase revenue. Spending cuts are only half of the long-term solution. We can mitigate the impact of budget cuts and spread the pain evenly by enacting permanent revenue increases — whether they are tax increases or increases from other sources.
3. Ban budget gimmicks. Because this is a permanent, structural problem, we can’t solve it with accounting shifts or one-time money. We should outlaw accounting shifts, significantly increase the budget reserve, and stop using one-time money to fund ongoing projects.
Some quick observations:
- Health care is a national issue, not a local one. Those who would want a single-payer system in Minnesota will essentially turn the state into a medical oasis as people with pre-existing conditions from across the globe flock here for what they perceive to be inexpensive treatment. WE would be the ones stuck to pay for it.
- One person’s budget “gimmick” is another’s “strategy.” Both parties have done it over the years. Some more obvious than others.
- Nothing should be sacred in the state budget. K-12 needs to get used to the idea that a new way of funding schools needs to be found. Especially for the rural school districts that are dying on the vine as their enrollments decline while the remainder of their population ages into retirement, fixed incomes and no tax base.
- With respect to taxes, start with federal conformity in a timely manner. Then do a flat tax across the board. Done.
Another important step would be returning to the requirement that inflation be factored into budget and revenue projections.
“We need to cut back on some of our state’s obligations…”
I’ve heard this a lot lately. I’m not 100% sure what obligations our state should be cutting back on. It seems like there’s more need, now, for support services that are publicly funded.
Seriously- suggest some places for cutting. I’d like to hear about the items in our budget that can be reduced, and the ways that those reductions won’t hurt the economic or social fabric of our state.
Educating children can be privatized that would eliminate 40 percent of state taxes. Privatize welfare, eliminate another 40%. Privatize everything, we don’t need no stinking laws we have a god given 2nd ammendment right to bear arms and as Mike Huckabee said use them to “take care of business”
Hey Rhus,
There is an organization for you called the Republican Party. It is growing really fast because they engage in clear thinking just like you. Check it out. I think you could thrive in that environment. And make sure that you continue to offer thoughtful commentary like this. It will further your cause.
Jeff, since I no longer live in Minnesota, I tend to skip over the Minnesota-politics posts, but I feel I should point out “The situation will only get worse. As our population ages, the cost of social services will rise, while the number of Minnesotans contributing to the tax rolls will decline.” doesn’t reflect a Minnesota problem, it reflects a nationwide problem due to the failure to solve the problem of elderlies.
Jonathan Swift was told by an American that roast irish baby was quite tasty. Let us bring back traditional anglo values.
Rhus, I really don’t see the relevance of invoking “A Modest Proposal.” That resources are finite is fact. That all else being equal an elderly person requires more resources to preserve their life than a young person is fact. That an elderly person has less ability to contribute to the supply of resources now and in the future than a young person is fact. That policies of providing social services to extend lives and prevent death, thereby ensuring the growth of the elderly population both in absolute numbers and as a portion of the total human population, are a phenomenon not unique to Minnesota is also fact. That programs like Medicare and Social Security have no positive attributes, since they produce no benefits to society and unnaturally prolong the lives of people who should be dead, and have negative attributes, since they consume an inordinate amount of finite resources, and should therefore be eliminated is an opinion based on those facts. It happens to be my opinion, and one that I don’t understand why nobody else seems to share. It’s also one that’s not comparable to “A Modest Proposal”, since Swift wasn’t advocating people eat Irish babies, he was illustrating the absurdity of thinking there was any reasonable alternative to his “other expedients” (” Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo…”). I really do think the best solution to the national (not Minnesota) problem of “As our population ages, the cost of social services will rise, while the number of [people] contributing to the tax rolls will decline” is to quit giving social services to that aged population. Anyone who’s still alive past the age of life expectancy at birth (which is too high to begin with) shouldn’t be, and I believe there is no reason to waste resources compounding that error. Die when you’re sixty and you’re doing your duty to the species. Keep demanding social services when you’re 70 or 80 something, you’re being greedy and selfish.
Gee Mr. Rosenberg….did you study economics to figure those little basic tenets out or have you been listening to Hannity? I mean really, that list is a typical laundry list for any true GOP conservative. But here you are, spouting it like a girl who just learned how to count to three…and has to tell everyone over and over again when she figures it out.
What next?
Are you going to discover that abortions kill babies?
I am going to give you a GOP PPPPPFFFFFFTTTTTTTT for that commentary.