Getting The State Budget In Order

The Des Moines Register ran an article today detailing the Iowa House GOP budget outlay.


Iowa's cigarette tax won't be raised if House Republicans get their way.

House GOP leaders released a $4.8 billion state spending plan for the 2006 budget year that they said covers the rising cost of Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor.

The plan, in addition to containing an $82 million school aid increase, sets aside an extra $40 million for targeted education programs.

The $40 million increase is about $100 million less than Gov. Tom Vilsack wants for an array of education initiatives: teacher pay, preschool and child care, school sharing incentives, and state support for the community colleges and state universities.

Conspicuously absent from the GOP plan is the 80-cents-per-pack cigarette tax increase recommended by Vilsack, a Democrat. The current tax is 36 cents a pack.

Setting a state budget that doesn't require any tax increase "is good news for taxpayers," said Rep. Bill Dix of Shell Rock, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. An overall spending increase of 4 percent "ought to be enough."

...

Democratic legislative leaders heaped criticism on the Republican plan.

"It is based on deception and broken promises," said House Minority Leader Pat Murphy of Dubuque. He accused the GOP of reneging on promises to improve teacher quality and creating the illusion of a balanced budget while tapping cash reserves.

During the last four years, the Legislature has borrowed heavily from other funds in order to balance the state's general operating budget. Rather than repay all the money, the House GOP plan calls for writing off about $1 billion owed to a tobacco endowment and other funds.

What's missing from all of this is what has been alluded to this week, notably in David Yepsen's column:  the state is not building a firm financial footing on which to operate.

To be honest, this probably won't be settled one way or another until the Legislative deadlock is somehow broken - or we start having honest discussions about what the state's "priorities" are rather than having Stuart Iverson decide for the entire state what our "priorities" are.

The truth here is that Medicaid assistance is being slashed at the Federal level, and we're going to have to pick up the tab - and find creative ways to do so other than draining every cash reserve we can find and reducing educational funding, law enforcement funding, and nearly everything else.  Draining funding from a program that promised a certain service (like draining the Senior Living Trust Fund as Tom Vilsack's budget proposed) without 'killing' the program is about as dishonest as it gets in legislative terms.

John Drury was right the other day in this column:  Iowans need to have a serious dialogue about what we expect out of our government, and how we're going to pay for it.

The insistance by the Legislative GOP leadership that we're somehow "meeting Iowa's priorities" is a sham.  Maybe if we repeat it enough we might begin to believe it - or maybe not.  Iowans deserve more from our state government.  In 2005, we're not getting it.