So you think you can balance the Minnesota state budget. The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities (CGMC) has produced a web tool that you can use to give it a try. And it's an interesting exercise to go through. The budget can easily be balanced by raising taxes and if you are stubborn, you can balance it without a single tax increase.
This is all well and good and attempts to show you the difficult choices that the next governor and our legislators will be facing, but if you look deeper a different story emerges.
In fiscal years 2010-11 the state of Minnesota will spend 30.682 billion dollars. The budget projections provided by CGMC show expenditures for fiscal years 2012-13 of 37.611 billion dollars. Simple math shows that as a whopping 22% increase over the preceding biennium, for a total of $6.929 billion. The increase is more than the projected deficit $5.766 billion.
So a simple solution comes immediately to mind: freeze spending at 2010-2011 levels and voila the budget is balanced.
Of course, real life isn't quite that simple, but one has to wonder about the magnitude of a problem that includes in its assumptions that a 22% increase in state spending is only to be expected.
Part of this monstrous 22% increase is a direct result of the silly games that both the legislature and governor have been playing for the last couple years. A couple billion dollars in expenditures have been postponed, primarily for K-12 education. These monies have been promised and are included in the projected budget. But that is only about one third of the increase.
The other big winner in the state budget is Health and Human Services whose budget jumps from a bit over $9 billion in fiscal year 2010-11 to $12 billion for fiscal year 2012-13.
Keith Downey [R] representing district 41-A (Edina) presents this clearly. On his web site he shows how state spending has outstripped both inflation and population growth. From his chart, Minnesota spending has been accelerating upwards for the last 20 years.
Isn't it time we had a serious discussion about state spending levels. Instead of assuming that a 22% increase in the state budget is a given, lets instead ask what is a realistic increase in governmental expenditures. Because right now, it doesn't look like we can afford to continue on as we have in the past.
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