The only thing Maryland is rich in these days is hyperbole. We do not mean to discount the effect of the truly awful financial meltdown meted out on Maryland’s citizens by unrestrained bankers and malignant government housing policies. But our elected officials act as if the state’s increasingly “dire” and “devastating” financial outlook arrived solely by an act of God and not in part by their own poor planning.
Harvard economist Richard Cooper explained why this happens at the Baltimore Council of Foreign Affairs meeting Tuesday. He riffed off of a favorite aphorism of former Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr., who said the job of the Fed is “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” Cooper said the problem is that we a have a political system that won’t take away the punch bowl.
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That could not be more true for Maryland, where despite major rumbles in the housing market, legislators passed a batch of new taxes in 2007 to fund a bigger government.
It is also the same state where the chairman of the state’s Spending Affordability Committee, John Bohanan, D-St. Mary’s, recommended increasing spending on higher education by $70 million every year for the next decade without offering a funding source in the middle of a recession. He said the recommendations from the commission to study higher education were based on “not what the state can afford, but what it takes to compete.”
Sorry Mr. Bohanan, but any of us could hand you a wish list. We need our legislators to lead us out of the potential $1.9 billion budget hole next year by tackling the big entitlement projects weighing down taxpayers and economic development not only right now, but for decades to come. Writing checks back to the state for a few days pay is a nice gesture, and an important symbolic one, but will end up paying back less than a rounding error to the state budget.
To permanently save Marylanders from billion-plus shortages, legislators must permanently reduce spending on pension and health care benefits and refuse to pass legislation, like the 2002 Thornton education bill, that requires spending increases without funding. We must live in the real world, not the utopia envisioned by Mr. Bohanan and the majority of his colleagues.
Baltimore Examiner, editorial, Examiner, Bohanan, Federal Reserve, Richard Cooper, Cooper, budget
