Spending is easy, the cuts are hard

You'll remember just months ago Gov. Bob Holden stood before the Legislature and gave lofty assurance that the state had cut spending to the bone and no additional cuts could be made. Gov. Holden used that reasoning to call for closing "tax loopholes" and wanted the Legislature to raise taxes to cover the shortfall. Gov. Holden then withheld funding from a number of state agencies including education.

If Holden had been right and absolutely no additional cuts were possible, it would have been relatively easy to agree with his call for additional state revenues. But, as you'll recall, the Legislature stuck to their guns and taxes remain what they were.

Well a minor tidbit came across the news yesterday that might just indicate that cuts can indeed be made if you look hard enough. It seems that following the legislative reluctance to raise taxes, Gov. Holden ordered a 10 percent reduction in the number of state vehicles on the roadways. And lo and behold, the state announced this week that indeed, nearly 1,000 state vehicles have been removed from service to help shore up a sagging state budget.

The state still runs nearly 11,000 state vehicles in job-related service such as social worker visits, nursing home inspections and transportation of prisoners. But imagine the cost savings of removing 1,000 vehicles from the state budget expense.

The point of this is simple. When someone - Democrat or Republican - says that there is no possibility of reducing government spending, hold that person suspect. It may be a few thousand dollars here and a few thousand dollars there. But in total, there virtually always remains the possibility of cutting government spending if you simply look hard and long enough.

A local Democratic wag likes to pick this column apart from time to time in defense of good Gov. Holden and all things Democrat. And the balance in state government and political opinions is healthy. But one point on which there should be no disagreement is this - if left unchecked, politicians of all makes and models will spend your money with relative ease. The difficult task is to live within a budget and spend only those dollars that will effect change or assist the public. A reduction in the number of state vehicles is just one example of budget management. Too bad we had to create a "crisis" to make a level-headed decision.