In the past couple of debates, Tom Emmer has made what sounds like a devastating point. The deficit, he says, is only on paper — the only reason we have a deficit is because those evil government-types are forecasting a spending increase of a whopping 17 percent next year. If we just kept spending flat, he claims, there would be no deficit.

This sounds like a great point, until you consider the context behind the numbers. First, the numbers Emmer is using, while technically true, are artificial and grossly misleading. More on that in a moment. Second, our budget right now is an austerity budget that’s hurting our schools, universities, and cities. Would we really want to make this budget — unallotments included — our new baseline?

So why do I say Emmer’s numbers are misleading? Because they gloss over both Tim Pawlenty’s school “shift” and the impact of Federal stimulus money. Pawlenty’s irresponsible borrowing from our schools made the last biennium’s numbers look artificially good, and this biennium’s look artificially bad. We borrowed $1.7 billion from our children, and we have to pay it back.

The school shift decreased our spending by $1.7 billion in this biennium, but that was only temporary. In the next biennium, not only will that $1.7 billion “savings” disappear, we’re scheduled to pay our schools back $1.1 billion, forcing a total increase in spending of $2.8 billion when we compare the two biennia. That’s nearly half of the entire deficit.

Once we remove the impact of the school payment shift, government spending decreases to 8 percent. Does that still sound like a lot? Well, it’s still artificially inflated, because it also assumes the expiration of Pawlenty’s temporary unallotments. This isn’t a major spending increase because the government is insatiable, as Emmer would like to imply. It’s a major increase because our Governor constantly relies on temporary fixes that make each new biennium look like a fresh catastrophe.

But wait — there’s more. In this biennium, we’ve had billions of dollars in Federal money to help us out. In the next biennium, that’s unlikely to happen. Emmer’s Republican buddies in Congress are dead set against it. Know what they’re calling state aid? A bailout!

That means it’s deeply misleading for Emmer to talk about what we’re spending right now. The fact is, the pain for our state is being significantly cushioned. Without Federal help, we couldn’t afford to be spending what we are right now. According to Minnesota Management and Budget’s last official forecast, we’re bringing in $30 billion in general fund revenues this biennium, but we’re spending $32.3 billion.*

Similarly, Emmer says that “Government is scheduled to get a 7 percent raise” in the next biennium. He’s once again comparing apples and oranges by not figuring in the state aids we received in the last biennium. Once you factor that in, we’re only getting a 0.4 percent increase.

I’ve thrown around a lot of numbers. So what does this all mean for Tom Emmer’s talking points?

Emmer has claimed, incredibly, that there is no deficit. He claims that if we just kept spending level, there would be no deficit. But that’s just not true. In fact, if we didn’t increase spending by a dime in this biennium, but we did pay our children the money we owe them (as we’re obligated to do), we would still have a budget deficit of $2.2 billion!

Not only that, that $2.2 billion deficit assumes making all of Pawlenty’s temporary unallotments permanent. Given their temporary nature, it makes sense to me that they should be restored to the budget to let future lawmakers deal with them appropriately. But if Emmer wants to reduce the deficit to “only” $2.2 billion, he’ll have to take responsibility for making those unallotments permanent and accepting a budget that:

1. Has forced schools to cut back to 4-day weeks;
2. Has led to enormous property tax increases, even as cities are shutting off streetlights to try to make up for lost state aid; and
3. Has made it difficult for our courts to even function properly.

If Tom Emmer were willing to make all of these disasters permanent, he would still need to find an additional $2.2 billion to cut. That’s an additional 7 perecent cut to a budget that was always an emergency, stopgap plan.

When you put it like that, it’s not quite as rosy a picture.

—-

* Two quick notes on the numbers used in this post. First of all, we’re talking only about General Fund revenues and expenditures. Second, if you check out MMB’s February forecast, it says we spent $33.3 billion in this biennium. That’s before an additional $1 billion in cuts from the last session, so we actually spent $32.3 billion. I’ve accounted for that in my own calculations.