Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee are unhappy with the modest cuts in the governor?s proposed budget, approved Friday, and they may try to cut it further on the House floor today.
But Democrats have shown little inclination to go along with any steeper trims in the more than $700 million increase Gov. Martin O?Malley seeks.
“The decision-making was not prudent and heartfelt,” Del. Susan Aumann, R-Baltimore County said. “Structural deficits require structural reforms.”
O?Malley and Democratic leaders freely concede that the state faces potential billion-dollar “structural” deficits beginning in fiscal 2009. A chart showing those future deficits was projected prominently on screens in the Appropriations Committee meeting.
“That chart has been haunting me for months,” Del. Gail Bates, R-Howard said. “We don?t feel we?ve done due diligence” on the budget. The four appropriations subcommittees recommended $166 million in proposed trims accepted by the full committee on Friday. But O?Malley has already submitted two supplemental budgets, reallocating the money cut to other programs in the $30 billion budget.
Bates said that means all the subcommittee work saved only an additional $1 million, budgeting a small estimated surplus of $31 million.
On Friday, Bates included three additional cuts in the proposed increases, some of the $104 million Republicans had identified, including reducing aid to the University System. But only a proposed reduction in funding for stem cell research gained any votes from the 22 Democrats on the committee.
Del. Steve Schuh, R-Anne Arundel, and the others said they are not suggesting that any department get less money than it did last year, but only that the increases be slowed. “We don?t see the need for there to be true cuts,” Schuh said. Without slowing the growth, “there will be no other alternative than to propose dramatic taxincreases.”
Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, R-Somerset, has proposed reducing funding for the Thornton aid to education by $159 million, leaving a $400 million increase in school aid next year.
But House Appropriations Committee Chairman Norman Conway, D-Wicomico, said such cuts are unlikely, even though Thornton aid was mandated without a funding source. Along with others, Conway believes that before the 2008 session, the governor and legislators need to determine “what Marylanders want from government and what they?re willing to pay.”
“If we don?t come up with a funding source, reductions are the only alternative,” Conway said.
