Now is the time for Maryland citizens to rise up and demand fundamental change in our state government. Nothing less than a fiscal revolution can save us.
When official release of tax revenue estimates hit us Tuesday, we will know not only the total failure of Gov. Martin O’Malley, but also the utter collapse of the taxing and spending control machinery approved as constitutional reform in 1916.
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That machinery is old and worn. Our leaders figured out ways to evade or seep through its barriers against their profligacy.
Confronted with reality, our leaders merely shrug and say: It’s a “structural” deficit.
Well then, restructure. This deficit is and always has been in the hands of our feckless leaders.
They cannot act as if the mess they got us into is some kind of inexorable natural phenomenon.
When O’Malley called an “emergency” General Assembly session late last year to inflict upon us the largest tax increase in state history, many voices said there was no crisis — yet — but a crisis was coming. Extorting another billion productive dollars out of us actually would make it worse.
Many of us said then the minimum prudent course of action would be to begin careful, permanent “structural” reductions in state spending to avoid debilitating hikes and eventually enable lower taxes to help pull Maryland up during a long-term national economic decline.
Instead they hit us with higher taxes and tricked us with one-time reduced spending increases and expense shifts that pass for “cuts” only in government. And they bet on slots. Is this fiscally responsible leadership? No.
They have hurled us toward a $500 million to $1 billion apocalypse, and that doesn’t even include looming billions in unfunded retirement benefits they falsely promised to state workers.
Now what are they going to do?
Don’t even think about more tax hikes. We the people are taxed up and tapped out.
No deficits allowed. That 1916 amendment — crafted by Democrats, by the way — forbids deficits. But it also forbids the spending increases that have averaged double inflation and now pump more than $30 billion a year into a public trough that should hold only $22 billion.
O’Malley and his lackey legislators missed the last best chance to make deliberative, long-term structural reductions in state spending.
Now they will have to do it fast and dirty. They must start at the top, not with the rank-and-file workers who actually give us our money’s worth.
Then they must convene a nonpartisan, nongovernment panel of experts to draft a new amendment on taxing and spending to put before voters in 2010.
They must lead the coming fiscal revolution or be overwhelmed by it.
Email the Governor
Find your elected officials:
www.mdelect.net/electedofficials/
Maryland state budget:
www.dbm.state.md.us/SearchUtility/
www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/34bud/html/00list.html
www.marylandtaxes.com/publications/fiscalrprts/fiscalrprts.asp
dls.state.md.us/SIDE_PGS/documents_pub/documents_pub.html
www.dbm.maryland.gov/portal/server.pt?
www.freestatefoundation.org
Public pensions:
www.pensiontsunami.com
www.csg.org/pubs/Documents/TIA_PublicPensions.pdf
www.reason.org/ps335polsum.pdf
