State faces up to $1 billion shortfall in January

To Trip's question, the answer is the latter. Of course we would have spent it, and had a few more scandals in so doing. The left would be screaming to raise taxes to protect our underfunded programs, and the rest would say cut all you can before turning to taxes. Let's cut the rhetorical political rants now that we have a real problem. Whatever. Rollback the tax cuts, roll back the spending increases and program expansions (funny how neither side recognizes the two relative to one another). That would be stupid of course but there are smarter ways to save, things we can't afford, and taxes may be necessary on top of it. The longer we wait, the more it will hurt. Unlike Obama's intention to spend when you're down mentioned above, we can't deficit spend, and there's a big difference between spending the grandkids' money and entitlements and paying for what you want now.

Of course, Trip. They'll be back with a larger deficit.

Last January, it was $500 million. Today, it’s $660 million. By January 2010, it should be $1 billion at least.

That's about the same amount these same state lawmakers began giving away in 2003 when they passed tax cuts for the wealthiest New Mexicans, and allowed big, out-of-state corporations to escape paying taxes on the profits they earned when we bought their China-made stuff.

Since 2004, approx. $1 billion a year, which should have flowed into the state's general fund, has gone into the pockets of the richest and big corporations. Let's do the math, since 2004, that's what? $6 billion? Just about the amount of NM's overall budget in one year?

I remember the rationale lawmakers used to justify this $1 billion a year give-away. They, the ABQ Chamber of Commerce, and Association of Commerce and Industry told us the money would be used for economic development, and to create jobs. Today, NM has the highest unemployment rate since 1944. Last month, 27,000 New Mexicans were out of a job. Today, 31,000 New Mexicans are looking for jobs which don't exist.

All this cutting, like Varela’s HB 17, which cuts student values again, this time by 12%, doesn’t help. It will only makes matters much, much worse.

Varela's HB 17 balances the deficit on the backs of school children and higher education students. There's no other way to describe it. HB 17 cuts preK-12 and higher education student values in three (3) big-time ways:

1. At least a 2% pay cut above the line for 65,000 PreK-12 & higher education employees;
2. 6% cuts below the line to PreK-12 programs & school district budgets; and,
3. 4% cuts to higher education budgets.

If conservative Democrats -- Jennings, Sanchez, Smith, Munoz and others (let's see how much help they get from Senate Republicans) --- pass HB 17, Varela's 12% education cut will be on top of an 8% student value cut passed by lawmakers in January.

In total, a heavy, devastating blow to:
1. PreK-12 school children;
2. Higher education students;
3. Education employees who will have less discretionary spending money;
4. Education employees who will be laid-off, putting a greater strain on disappearing public services and the economy;
5. Capitalism, which will suffer a more prolonged, if ever, recovery due to even less discretionary spending;
6. NM's tax revenues, which will continue their death-spiral; and,
7. NM's treasury, which will collect even less tax revenues.

As President Obama said last April during his Georgetown speech on the economic collapse, “The last thing government should do in a recession is to cut spending.”

Now, let’s jump to Brian Sanderoff's Poll for New Mexico Education Partners. A poll which newspapers of record and independent media ignore. It provides this former university assistant professor with a ‘teaching moment’.

Sanderoff’s poll explains why educators, education employees, parents, and students unsuccessfully demanded the House vote NO on HB 17, and are now flooding senators with the same demand.

See poll results @ nm.aft.org – specifically, take a look at page 5: "Likelihood of Voting For Legislator Who Reduced School Funding Rather Than Raise Taxes to Help Balance Budget".

Brian’s results are summarized, "The plurality of voters (43%) say they would be less likely to vote for their state legislator if he/she voted to reduce public school funding rather than raise taxes to help balance the budget. Just 14% of voters say they would be more likely to support a legislator who voted to reduce school funding rather than raise certain taxes to help balance the budget."

Republicans get that finding. That's why HAFC Republicans, except for Wallace, voted against HB 17. How many Republicans voted for HB 17 in the House today? Count 'em. Want to predict how many Senate Republicans will vote for HB 17 or similar spending cut bills?

If you're Kiki Saavedra, Ben Lujan, Lucky Varela, Ken Martinez, John Heaton, or other conservative Democratic House members who voted for HB 17 --- how would you enjoy running for re-election in Nov. 2010 when 43% of registered voters, from the get-go, are less likely to vote for you because you voted to cut the value of school children and higher education students? What percentage did R. Berry win with?

Anybody want to announce early for a Democratic seat in the House? Likely there will be plenty of new, fresh faces -- progressives most likely -- like Eleanor Chavez, Eric Griego, Tim Keller --- who will run in Demo primary, and likely win.

You're assuming that the Legislature would not have spent the money had the tax cuts not taken effect. Not making a political argument, but just making the observation. I wonder what would have happened if the tax cuts had not been approved. Would NM still be in this situation because the money was spent? Or would the Legislature and Gov. Richardson have tried to set aside as much as possible of the money for situations like this?

Kicking the can down the road.

What's your point?

We're putting a band aid on a patient that requires major surgery. Take two aspirin and call me in January.

...particularly since the state’s budget was about $4 billion in 2003 and has grown by 50% over the last seven years, while the state’s population only increased by 6%.

I guess we could pray for the price of oil and gas to go up.

According to the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/business/ener...) market analysts anticipate the current price of $81 a barrel will continue to increase to above $100 by early next year - however the increase in price is being driven by speculation and investors fleeing the falling U.S. dollar, not actual demand - which remains weak because of the recession.

Yes, ironic isn't it.
I suppose we couls lay off the maintenance people and some od the other worker bees - but lord don't touch the exempt employees appointed by El Gobernador.

...sounds like a race to the bottom (or 'death spiral'?), in which multiple individuals act to insure their own self -interests and thereby bring about the destruction of a shared limited resource, even when it's not in anyone's long term interests for this to happen.