Budgeting from an Artificial High
After a decade of increasing spending, in this years budget debate responsible spenders start off with their backs to the goal line.
by Mark Cavers
After a decade of seeing spending spiral up and up, advocates of responsible budgeting are at a huge disadvantage. We start the debate faced with not only correcting this years budget, but with overcoming last years bad budget, and the one before that. The Governor’s budget looks to hike spending by $1.7 billion, but this is just the tip of the problem. These spending hikes come on top of an already inflated spending base. From 2000 to 2009 spending increased by 26% after inflation. Put another way, spending has increased from $3,983 per resident in 2000, to $4,730 per resident in 2009. It is on top of this record spending that Governor Quinn wants a $1.7 billion increase.
That is why the Illinois Policy Institute has proposed a workable alternative that fixes this years budget, and the structural spending increases of the past decade. We propose General Revenue spending at $27.570 billion compared to the Governor’s proposed $35.382 billion. This would mean spending $130 less per person then Governor Blagojevich did in fiscal year 2003. The entire plan laid out in Budget Solutions 2012 can be seen online, but here are a few examples of what these levels of spending would mean:
- We would decrease total education spending by $350 per student. States like Florida have shown that it is possible to achieve better results with less then we are currently spending.
- The Department of Health Care and Family Services would see its total budget increase by 3.50% from 2008 levels.
- Currently, one out of every four dollars in state spending goes towards public employee pay and benefits. This can be brought down through a number of possible approaches including: benefit reform, pension reform, and pay reform.
These are not the doomsday scenarios painted by some, these are reasonable numbers that bring our spending in line with our revenue. The Governor’s budget doubles down on the failed policies of the past decade. But in opposing this budget, we can not just fight for an unsustainable status quo, we must pursue a new path, not just the same path at a different speed. Budget Solutions 2012 provides a road map for that path.