Yesterday the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a great editorial. The problem it addressed was straightforward: the $500 million plus state budget shortfall. The editorial writers made no bones about the obvious source of the problem:

Digging out of this hole is Missouri’s true challenge. But neither our Legislature nor our governor can get over their “no new taxes” pledges to do anything meaningful about it.

The solution they suggested was just as straightforward:

Mr. Nixon should declare a holiday. A tax credit holiday.

This single action would more than fill the budget hole estimated by legislative leaders to be in the range of $500 million.

Everybody in the Capitol knows that Missouri’s biggest ongoing budget problem, outside of the Great Recession, is the state’s propensity to hand out tax credits like legislative candy along a parade route. Some credits go to good causes, like senior citizens on a fixed income. Most go to developers or corporations as incentives, theoretically, to create jobs.

Unfortunately for the theory that tax credits create jobs, the evidence that they do so overall is just not there. This fact is fairly well known, accounting for the fact that there are folks on all sides of the partisan divide willing to take pot shots at the practice.

Happily, there are some folks who are willing to at least try to take action to rationalize the use of tax credits. Sadly, they aren’t in Missouri. Michigan Democratic lawmakers, referencing the relationship between an educated work force and job creation, put forward a plan to finance free community college tuition for state residents, which would paid for by canceling $3.5 million worth of tax credits:

Study after study after study has emphasized the importance of a highly educated workforce in the economic vitality of any state in the 21st century” said Senate Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing

So what has our governor decided to do? In spite of the importance of education to our economically beleaguered state, Governor Nixon proposes to partially balance the budget by cutting $89 million from an already mediocre state higher education system.

This year, when you hear talk about the state’s dire budget situation and the pain and suffering it has caused – 860 state jobs will be lost, for just one instance – remember there was a solution staring us in the face, and miracle of miracles, it might even  have garnered some bipartisan support. Also keep in mind that a few days ago, GOP gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence actually proposed a moratorium on tax credits as an important part of his economic plan. He seems to have learned something in those home economics courses.

To give the Governor his due, he’s up against a system that practically dictates that the worst case solution will be the only practicable option. In spite of some GOP criticism of tax credits, others in the legislature have made their unwillingness to reform the state’s program known. Last year, in fact, the Governor was warned by Steve Tilley, who has since become House Speaker, and three other powerful committee chairman – before he even put a budget proposal forward – that they would not permit him to use tax credit reform to balance the budget.

It’s hard not to conclude that once again powerful vested interested are calling the shots when it comes to the distribution of state tax dollars.  Nevertheless, one can’t help wondering just what might be achieved if the Governor had been willing to go out on a limb and show just a little more political courage. Surely there’s a time when we have to fight – even if we’re already backed to the wall? Perhaps that’s when we most need to show some fight.

In his most recent tweet about the President’s debt reduction plan, Rep. Todd Akin (R-2) seems to be trying for a little gravitas – as befits a senatorial candidate, perhaps?:

Glad to see the President finally entering the conversation on our federal debt. He should remember it is a spending – not revenue – problem

Surprising comment on two points:  

One – Akin has never impressed anyone who watches him closely as a person who enjoys give and take on the issues – witness his treatment of folks who try to ask challenging questions at his town halls. So now he wants us to believe that he welcomes presidential involvement? Particularly when that involvement contrasts so vividly with the fact-challenged GOP budget plan put forward by Rep. Ryan?*

Two – where’d Akin get the idea that that the deficit is a spending problem rather than a revenue problem? Lots of Republicans like to say this, but it clearly doesn’t stand up to even cursory examination. Do they really think anyone with half a brain believes it? Do they really believe it themselves?

We decrease revenue, presto-bingo, we increase the federal debt. Remember – we had a budget surplus until Bush enacted his tax cuts – cuts that, incidentally, contrary to the related tenet that Akin pushes, didn’t seem to have much positive effect on the economy during the Bush years. Instead, economic growth was consistently anemic, ultimately culminating in the massive Bush Recession.

Math-challenged Rep. Akin also seems to be ignoring the incontrovertible truth that if we do nothing about spending, but just let the the Bush tax cuts die a natural death, we would halve the deficit by 2021.

As Eliot Spitzer pointed out in Slate Magazine last January, our budget is out of balance: we spend in the neighborhood of $3.8 trillion, we take in about $2.5 trillion in revenue, leaving a deficit of about $1.3 trillion. Think about it. And then consider that Rep. Akin believes revenue absolutely, positively isn’t part of the problem. Do you think it might be due the fact that his ideological blinders are welded on just a little bit too tightly?

Just goes to show that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and, no matter how he gussies himself up, Senator Akin would probably be just as fact-challenged and hide-bound as Representative Akin has shown himself to be on so many memorable – and often genuinely amusing – occasions.

* But wait – was this just Rep. Akin trying to be snarky? If so, he needs to try a little harder.    

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) seems bemused about how physically large the U.S. budget document is:

FY2012 hit my desk, 4 Volumes – Budget – Historical Tables – Analytical Perspectives – Appendix & it weighs more than any Bass I ever caught

If you go to his Web page, however, you will better understand his apparent surprise that a sophisticated, powerful country with a population north of 300 million people might need more than a three page budget. That good ol’ Billy, who’s been on a budget cutting spree with his GOP homeboys, is a man of few words is readily apparent in the section devoted to his views on spending cuts and debt which reads in its entirety:

Spending Cuts and Debt affect us all and dealing with these issues are important to my work in Congress.

Is this what people mean by “laconic”? In case you think he dealt with the issue elsewhere, here’s Billy on the related topic of the economy and jobs – and, I assure you, there’s no more than this:

The issues of Economy and Jobs are important to our district and to my work in Congress.

Billy may not know all the facts – or any of the facts – but he does seem to want to keep quiet about it. Not so Vicky Hartzler (R-4) who had this to say about President Obama’s 2012 budget:

Citizens of the 4th District want their government to cut spending and help create jobs, … This budget proposal fails these tests in every respect. We’ve got to do better for our children and grandchildren.

Somebody ought to tell her what John Boehner acknowledged today – the budget cuts that the House – including little Vicky – wants to enact  will cost mucho jobs*. And what’s worse, Boehner admitted that he and, presumably, his rank-and-file GOP House members, don’t really care. Vicky ought to check in with her leadership now and then. At the very least, she needs to know what it is she owes to the children and grandchildren, doesn’t she?  

And while Vicky’s working on her attitude, she ought to have a word with Rep. Akin (R-2) who seems to be reading from the same script. I suspect if I were to visit the pages of the rest of our House GOP members, I would find statements that indicate that these folks are all equally careless about the nature of the real world and the role of finance.

After all, the incessant GOP babble about “fiscal reality” is coming from people who went after the 2011 budget like a troop of blind-folded axe murderers. If enacted, their proposed cuts would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and put vastly more vulnerable people at risk.

In fact, the Center for American Progress (CAP) tells us that the House Appropriations Committee shoe-horned a hack-job on the budgets of 12 of the 15 federal agencies into a two week period. This time frame means that:

… not only will those voting on the proposal have little opportunity to understand it but the authors themselves will not have fully vetted or completely understood what they are proposing. There have been no hearings, no requests for testimony, and no opportunity even for staff charged with proposing the cuts to do agency-by-agency analysis of the possible negative consequences. Members will vote next week on the package without fundamental knowledge of how major budget changes in literally thousands of federal programs will impact the country in general or their own constituents in particular.

Then, of course, there is the fact that the cuts, although plenty destructive, don’t really amount to a hill of beans when it comes to deficit cutting:

The $44 billion that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is insisting we take out of the domestic spending is “peanuts.” With a $1.5 trillion deficit it could be lost as a rounding error. But applied to only a selected sliver of the entire budget it could do immense damage to critically needed government infrastructure and services.

There is also the fact that in many of the agencies these cuts will mostly result in  personnel cuts – CAP gives the example of the FBI –  where termination costs will wipe out most of the savings, not to mention the expense that will be incurred when displaced stafff move onto the unemployment rolls. But, oh frabjous day, the hatchet job will have the effect of rendering agencies like the FBI nearly toothless.

I’ve read that ol’ Billy Long is sitting back and savoring the pleasures of a job completed in regard to the 2011 budget the House has produced: “we got her done” he is quoted as saying. I wonder if he and the rest of the gang has any idea what it is they’ve actually done? Are our elected GOP officials even capable of a process that, as CAP puts it, “insures we all understand what we are cutting and what benefits and costs of those cuts will be”? Yet indications are that these same thickwits are aching to shut the government down in the name of budget cuts the impact or effectiveness of which they don’t begin to fully fathom – all so some Tea Partiers can make a “dramatic statement.”

* Link added to TPM article describing the scope of job loss.