It seems as if, every year, the holiday calendar keeps getting pushed up a little bit.

There’s no reason to start putting up Halloween decorations in September or Christmas decorations in November; that’s a little much, no matter when the stores start stocking up on candy and decorations.

It would be easy to say that when the state of Maine announced a $265 million surplus for the next biennium, Democrats received an early Christmas gift. Except many of you already had your lights and decorations up, didn’t you? Let’s try to show a bit more restraint, people.

Democrats in Augusta ought to show some restraint when it comes to the upcoming budget surplus as well. Sure, it’s easy to say that it all should simply be spent; after all, the state has plenty of problems to fix and it has the extra money to fix them. So we ought to just spend it now, right? Let’s take a few moments and keep that spending train on hold in the station. There are a couple of major problems with the “spend” approach.

This past session, Maine Democrats had ample opportunity to address every possible problem in the state when they passed a majority budget. It’s all well and good to say that the surplus could be spent on bills that were passed without being funded, but they weren’t funded at the time for good reason.

If those new programs had really been a priority, the money could have been found to fully fund them in the last budget; other programs could have been eliminated or downsized or taxes could have been raised. Sure, politicians in both parties usually hate to raise taxes or cut spending, but it’s always a possibility. If legislators had wanted to fund new programs last session, they could have and would have. Moreover, if they decide to fund those programs this session, they can find ways to do it without touching the surplus.

The presumption that a budget surplus should be spent on new programs rests on a few false premises. It presumes that every other program in state government is both vitally necessary and not wasting a single dime. That’s clearly not the case, nor is it ever likely to be. There’s always savings to be found somewhere in our massive budget. Any time state legislators revisit the budget, regardless of the reason, they should always be looking for those savings. The state government has a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure that their money is spent wisely.

Another problem with that approach is that, even though few lawmakers would admit it, sometimes bills are passed without being funded on purpose. It’s a reckless practice, but it’s a way to pass legislation and give the sponsor an accomplishment without fully implementing the bill or spending any money on it.

It’s similar to turning the bill into a study, but somehow, even more pointless than that. That’s not to say that all unfunded legislation that’s passed is stuck in that limbo forever; some of it is, indeed, eventually funded at some level. However, it’s wrong to presume that all legislation that was passed but not funded ought to be given taxpayer dollars. Sometimes that bill ended up with the exact amount of money that legislators intended.

Furthermore, each time a new budget surplus occurs, it’s not necessarily an ongoing infusion of cash, but more a one-time injection of funds. If there’s an economic downturn or a natural disaster, that seemingly hefty surplus could vanish overnight. Once a new program is funded, it doesn’t vanish quite so easily. Legislators will fight tooth and nail to save it rather than eliminate or scale it back. So, every time a new program is funded, it establishes a new baseline that will be difficult to cut during the next downturn.

While it may be tempting to simply spend all of the surplus, we need to prioritize. That priority ought to be tax relief, further investments in the rainy day fund, and one-time expenditures – like eliminating lead pipes.

One-time expenditures are a good use of a surplus because they don’t add to the overall baseline, but instead make needed investments while we have the funds. While the entire surplus may not be returned to the people in the form of tax relief as it should be, it absolutely shouldn’t be used to support a single dime spending on new programs. To do so would be the opposite of fiscal responsibility.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins. He can be contacted at:
jwfossel@gmail.com
Twitter: @jimfossel

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