Saving money is a lot of work

Governor Tim Pawlenty has chosen a schtick to use during his run for the presidency. His vetoes, his borrowing, and his cutting of important state programs as governor were all attempts to position himself as That Fiscally-Responsible Guy^TM. In this role, he regularly chastises anyone and everyone who will listen about wasteful spending, imploring them to look at his example. A favorite target, of course, is Barack Obama.

Pawlenty’s record does include slashing many state programs, but that’s nothing to be particularly proud of. As some of you may recall, Pawlenty’s budget cuts in this biennium have been estimated to cost us four times as many jobs as comparable tax increases would have.

Pawlenty also trumpets a lot of so-called “savings” and “efficiencies” that he has introduced to Minnesota. In reality, though, many of these savings have failed to materialize. For instance, take Pawlenty’s plan to team up with Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle to share costs between Minnesota and Wisconsin on a variety of programs. It’s not going very well:

The governors originally put the savings at $10 million apiece, but Doyle’s office estimated Wisconsin’s savings to date at just $74,313, mainly from getting a better price on software from a Minnesota contract and piggybacking on a Minnesota transportation study. Pawlenty’s office refused to offer a comparable estimate, but of 17 Minnesota agencies surveyed by the AP, only the Revenue Department quantified a benefit from the collaboration: $2,565.88 in outstanding debt collected from Wisconsin tax refunds.

So far, Pawlenty is $9,997,43.12 short of his goal. There’s a lesson here — government programs aren’t as inefficient as conservatives would have you believe, and wringing efficiencies out of them takes a lot of time and effort. It’s an admirable goal, but maybe Pawlenty should figure out how to do it before criticizing others.