Absolutely nothing is special about the legislative session Gov. Martin O’Malley called in time for Halloween. It’s just the same old traditional reflex response of government to its own profligacy and incompetence: Avoid good management by shoving government’s hand deeper into our pockets.
Instead of calling this farce a “special” session, why don’t we just be honest and call it a “more-of-the-same” session: Surrender our money or lose our property and go to prison.
Compounding farce with folly is the effort of our overlords to call this $1.7 billion deficit “structural.” Which means what, exactly? They aren’t responsible for it? There’s nothing they can do about it? They found it when they got to Annapolis after a summer at the beach?
Hey, Gov. O’Malley, structure this: It’s our money, not your money. Give it back to us.
Of course, as usual, the traditional government response to calls for responsibility is to cut the most vulnerable among us in retribution. We shall witness it targeting every program for needy children, indigent elderly, disabled veterans and environmental protection.
Rank-and-file police, prison, fire, health care and other essential public safety personnel who do the real work of government will be next to find their necks on the block. Then roads, public transportation and anything else that can inflict the most pain on the greatest number of taxpayers.
Government will give us cuts. Right where it hurts.
Untouched will be giveaways to campaign contributors, government jobs whose absence no one would notice, self-indulgent travel and perks for its members, high-pay drone positions for cronies and the general waste and inefficiency at which government excels.
It’s easy to argue effectively about one-term Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s true tightness, but at least he tried. His last budget, which we’re living through now, put “saving for the future” and “returning money to Maryland taxpayers” as priorities No. 1 and No. 2.
Why not break with tradition and call a truly historic special session for the sole purpose of lowering taxes?
Or gather lawmakers to comb through state expenses in detail, line by line, department by department, job by job, employee by employee, contract by contract, program by program, and eliminate weak, ineffective, low-performing and redundant expenses.
Go ahead, leaders, tell us why you are not doing that. Because it’s easier for you to raise taxes and force us to pay them?
Well, here’s an alternative: Just make taxes voluntary. Then youwould have to earn your keep through performance the way the rest of us do.
Now that would be special.
