When income falls, expenses must be cut

Sunday, February 12, 2012

We are constantly amazed at how little regard special interests have for the welfare of their children and grandchildren.

Pennsylvania is some $500 million below the income estimates in this year's budget. Gov. Tom Corbett presented his view of next year's budget with that lower revenue in mind, and he suggested some painful cuts in state spending.

Yet with respect to education, here's what we read from one group: "There are no increases for basic subsidy and special education in a year when school districts are facing substantial, mandated increases in local pension contributions."

Pennsylvania will take in less money this year than is budgeted.

Sure, pension costs will soar, because the Ridge Administration, with the tacit approval of the school boards and teacher unions, drastically underfunded pensions in return for perquisites.

But if there is no money to pay the increased costs from increased revenue, what's left?

• Cut programs, staff, transportation and other expenses.
• Invalidate the contracts for pensions (bankruptcy is one option), and reinstall them with lower benefits at lower, affordable costs.

It was retiree benefit costs that drove General Motors and Chrysler into needing federal bailouts to avoid bankruptcy.

Now the equivalent is happening to school districts.

Yet some people think that just because expenses are going up, government must come up with more revenue to offset those expenses.

We don't buy it.

We don't like cutting any educational services. But we'll sure support cutting school sports before we'll support drastic cuts in state police staffing, to cite just one possible area for tradeoffs.

Does it have to come down to such draconian choices?

Probably not.

But some difficult, painful choices have to be made. The overplayed mantra "It's for the children" is, in a word, hogwash.

What good does it do to educate today's children in expensive fashion if, when they become adults, there are no good jobs, the highways and sewers are falling apart, foreigners own all the country's riches and ship our resources abroad, etc.?

That's the legacy of deficit spending.

If "the children are our future" has meaning, then we need to reduce deficit spending today, live within our means, and provide a fiscally responsible governmental framework for them as adults.

- Denny Bonavita