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<\/p>\nThe other day, I paraphrased an old PJ O’Rourke quip; only in baseline budgeting can it be said one is “cutting” a budget when one merely reduces the “planned” increase.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Where have you gone, P.J. O’Rourke? \u00a0Our state turns its broke eyes to you.<\/p>\n
The local leftyblog buildup and and array of special interest pimps have been caterwauling “Emmer Plans To Cut $2 Billion From Health And Human Services!”. \u00a0It’s a return to the Reagan era Democrat attack, “they want to starve the children and throw Grandma out into the street!”.<\/p>\n
Like virtually everything the DFL and media (ptr) have said in this campaign so far, it’s either grossly lacking in context, or it’s a lie.<\/p>\n
In this case, it’s both.<\/p>\n
The Health and Human Services budget from the 2010-2011 biennium is 9.083 billion.<\/p>\n
The “Autipilot” increase calculated by the State Office of Management and Budget, which assumes everything increases in proportion with previous requests and calculated “needs” for the 2012-12 biennium, was 12.0 billion. \u00a0 As Emmer notes in pretty much every stump speech, that’s a 32% increase. \u00a0And there is nothing <\/em>to say that budget, if left on autopilot or to the DFL (pardon the redundancy) won’t grow by that same rate in perpetuity, until it is <\/em>the entire budget.<\/p>\n Mark Dayton’s budget “plan” stated no figure for HHS spending. \u00a0Tom Horner plans to spend an incredible\u00a012.14 billion – more than even the “autopilot” increase – a 34% hike in spending. To be fair to Horner, his stump rhetoric says that some of that spending is to go to getting people off <\/em>of the HHS bandwagon. \u00a0It’s a laudable goal – indeed, it should be part of future HHS spending planning. \u00a0But leaving aside the fact that Horner hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected, and that the DFLers that survive in the legislature will make sure that all spending goes to entitlements, the fact is that in the middle of a deep recession when state unemployment has just topped 7% for the first time in decades, Emmer’s premise is that jumpstarting the economy and re-engineering our wasteful government is much more important. \u00a0That’s the premise; it’ll be tested this November.<\/p>\n Emmer plans to spend 9.75 billion on HHS. \u00a0 Do the math yourself. \u00a0That’s a 7% increase.<\/p>\n So the DFL chanting shrieking point is “Emmer is slashing two billion dollars <\/em>from the HHS budget!” \u00a0It’s buncombe, of course; for starters, there will be <\/em>no actual official 2012-2013 budget until the next legislature and administration produce one.<\/p>\n The “budget” from which Emmer will “cut” is a hypothetical estimate, with all numbers basically entered via an opaque formula that is based largely on recent-past growth. \u00a0 It is not an actual budget.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n And, most importantly, by every rational measure, Emmer increases HHS spending. \u00a0Not as much as the DFL would prefer, and not to the extent to which they’ve jiggered the system, and not in a way that might not require HHS to prioritize its spending more wisely – which is, indeed, what Emmer’s plan calls for. \u00a0But it is not <\/em> a cut.<\/p>\n The DFL must be really <\/em>worried – or really not think the citizens of Minnesota are very smart – if this is the best they can manage.<\/p>\n I’ll wager “both”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day, I paraphrased an old PJ O’Rourke quip; only in baseline budgeting can it be said one is “cutting” a budget when one merely reduces the “planned” increase. Where have you gone, P.J. O’Rourke? \u00a0Our state turns its broke eyes to you. The local leftyblog buildup and and array of special interest pimps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13562"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13566,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13562\/revisions\/13566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}