Commissioning Budget Cuts

March 12, 2009

It’s depressing to dwell on the deluge of bad ideas -- and bad legislation -- emanating from Washington. And as long as the messiah-in-chief’s favorability rating remains high, he and congressional Democrats are free to implement the Really Great Society.

But give some pols credit for keeping the dream of a smaller federal government alive. U.S. Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) has proposed the Federal Agency Program Realignment and Closure Act. His bill creates a “commission to address government spending program by program.” The panel would “provide an objective, non-partisan, and independent review and analysis,” similar to the work of the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission. (The BRACC has overseen five rounds in the last two decades, and as a result, shuttered hundreds of obsolete and redundant military installations.)

The National Taxpayers Union believes Sullivan’s proposal would tackle “wasteful spending and inefficient or duplicative programs without allowing special interest groups to derail the process.” Americans for Tax Reform calls it a “way to address America’s increasingly critical over-spending problem by eliminating waste and redundancies.”

So in ObamaWorld, it’s safe to assume that the Federal Agency Program Realignment and Closure Act is dead on arrival.

At the state level, BRACC-type analyses of government expenditures might fare better. Since the “laboratories of democracy” aren’t permitted to run deficits the way Washington does, they have limited options to address their mounting fiscal meltdowns. It’s either raise taxes -- and exacerbate an economic plunge that’s doing just fine on its own -- or adopt some combination of personnel and program cuts.

A homegrown version of Rep. Sullivan’s proposal promises to be strong medicine for the Nutmeg State, where spending, adjusted for both population and inflation, soared by a factor of five between 1970 and 2005. Over 7 percent of Connecticut’s gross domestic product is confiscated by the general fund -- a share bested by only six states. (In 2007, expenditures were nearly $4,400 per resident, ranking it third in the nation.)

The veritable army that defends Big Government in Connecticut instinctively pins the cost of their cause on the Northeast’s priceyness. It’s not an entirely false argument, but social conditions here should more than offset excessive energy, construction, and labor costs. Connecticut’s crime, poverty, and uninsured rates are all well below national averages. Few but those who benefit from runaway public spending believe Connecticut needs a government as big as it has today.

Skepticism of yet another “blue ribbon” examination of Connecticut’s budget is warranted. Alleged “experts” have been put to work on the matter before: the Bowles Committee (1950), the Etherington Commission (1971), the Filer Commission (1976), the Gengras Committee (1977), the Thomas Commission (1990), and the Hull-Harper Commission (1991-1992). Not much came of any of them. The recommendations of “Operation ACE,” an effort launched in 2003 by Governor John Rowland and legislators, were ignored as well. And according to a recent investigation by the (Manchester) Journal Inquirer, the “Commission on Innovation and Productivity” has “neither met nor filed annual reports since it was created in state law in 1993.”

So why bother with another attempt? There are 8 billion reasons -- maybe more. The projected budget deficit for the next biennium is staggering, and in the state with the highest tax burden in the nation, the “solution” of “revenue enhancements” is beyond asinine.

After doing nearly everything possible to grow state government during her first four and a half years in office, Governor M. Jodi Rell has reinvented herself as a fiscal conservative. Her support of a hard-nosed State Agency Program Realignment and Closure Commission -- not a tinker-around the edges snow job -- would be one way to demonstrate that her sudden commitment to no-new-taxes budgeting is for real.

Another would be Rell’s insistence that commissioners not be drawn from the usual “stakeholder” community. Public employees, unions, and “business” groups have backed a series of destructive policies over the last few decades, and must be kept far from a serious endeavor aimed at downsizing Connecticut government.

The folks in charge this time should be entrepreneurs, the self-employed, taxpayer activists, and non-subsidized academics. The group wouldn’t need to break new ground. For years, investigative reporters, limited-government organizations, and state auditors have documented the countless ways Connecticut government squanders money. Commissioners would be able to craft a plan full of significant savings in just a few months.

A spending-reduction commission with teeth? Perhaps it’s possible in Connecticut -- if the governor has the guts to spend some of her sizable political capital.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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