Budget crisis

The state of North Carolina is in deep financial trouble. One way to balance the budget is to not spend money so the University system is facing some very stiff budget cuts. These are the kinds of deep cuts that will seriously effect the system's ability to actually teach students something worthwhile. In fact, one possible solution our administrators here at Appstate have come up with, right after "firing a whole bunch of instructors" is to reduce the number of courses required for a major.

You have to think about that for a minute. NOWHERE have they suggested we cut the number or pay of administrators, NOWHERE have they suggested we get rid of administrative structures that don't strictly support the function of teaching students and research.

Why would that matter? Here is a little tidbit from the local political reporter Scott Mooneyham in discussing the budget:

All involved might want to take a hard look at how a decade’s worth of similar budget flexibility has affected the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.

Just in case Gov. Perdue, Tillis and Berger have forgotten, during a five-year period of that budget flexibility, the number of university administrators grew twice as fast as the number of students.

Why wouldn’t they? The motives and incentives of the decision-makers -- the university administrators -- became too heavily weighted toward rewarding those like themselves.

Meanwhile, the state’s budget writers had literally and figuratively passed the buck. In the process, they lessened public accountability.

Save administrators! Cut back on classes! Fire instructors!

want to drive on a bridge designed by an engineer from a school that reduced the number of classes for an engineering degree?

Walking the Walk on austerity

I am not convinced that there is anything such thing as a 'Tea Party' or 'Tea Partiers' - though the Washington Post did try to find them. A shame I don't have the url for that one. Most of the heavy money, at least among the pundacracy, is that the Repubs have no intention of balancing the budget nor of cutting the deficit once they are in control. Fiscal austerity? Bah. Deficits? They don't matter (I think Dick Cheney actually said that once).

So what are the fiscal hawks going to do?

Well, take heart - it CAN be done. Just look here at this little township that has really done it. Partly by cutting the police dept in half. On the national scale that would probably be the equivalent of cutting our defense budget by half.

Think they have the stomach for it?

Our "Right of Center" country

Words about as meaningless as sand squiggles on the beach.

Here is a little factlet:

To put it bluntly, middle-class Americans of the right, left and center have come to expect a level of personal financial security that -- despite the stereotypes -- most people around the world would never demand from their governments. In a book review this month, Brink Lindsey, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute -- a man who knows what he is up against -- reported some extraordinary statistics. The majority of Americans are wary of global trade, don't trust free markets and also think that "the benefits from . . . Social Security or Medicare are worth the costs of those programs." And when the sample is restricted to people who support the Tea Party movement? The share is still 62 percent.

So where do we find fiscal conservatives? Or is something else going on?

just as long as they don't cut Social Security, the university's budget, my 401(k), or anything else I depend on, I'm for fiscal sanity myself.

Budget woes

Everyone wants to blast everyone about the deficit. But nobody, and I mean nobody, in either party wants to consider doing anything serious about it. Here, though, is a perfectly straightforward proposal from Kevin Drum in Mother Jones:

But if we were even close to having a sane political class in this country, it wouldn't be that hard to hit this target: (1) Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Nobody was overtaxed in the 90s. (2) Do a conventional fix for Social Security. This would be good for another 1% or so. (3) Get serious about reining in Medicare costs. Squeezing another 1% via Medicare changes wouldn't be that difficult if both parties were willing to treat it as a real problem instead of a chance for demagoguery. (4) Add in a modest assortment of spending cuts (smaller military, unprivatized student loan, reduced ag subsidies) and revenue increases (estate taxes, carbon taxes, financial transaction taxes) and you'd get the rest of the way there. If you don't like these suggestions, feel free to sub in your own ideas here.

For a country as big and rich as the United States, this stuff isn't even very painful. We could do it in a single legislative session and 99% of the country would barely notice the effects. And yet it's the next best thing to impossible. It doesn't speak well for our future.

My modest change would be to craft a series of taxes and tax credits to lower our dependence on petroleum, not for any 'Green' reason, but simply as a necessary step for national defense. But then, I am not part of any political class, sane or otherwise.

Balancing the budget: we can't get there from here

Actually, there are not that many ways of doing it without both tax hikes and spending cuts. And at least some of those spending cuts would have to come from the military. If military spending is off the table, then I don't see how it happens. Same is true with entitlements, as far as I can tell.

Here is one Republican commentator's thoughts on our war budget.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not exorbitant drains on the federal budget. Even if the cost of the wars increased 10 times, they are costs the United States must bear, because that is what victory demands.

Victory demands. What kind of victory? How important is it to our national interests? Who cares: send money. Oh yes, spending money on anything else will bankrupt the nation for all time.

Reagan was right: there are simple solutions, just not easy ones.

Without Comment

(thanks to Andrew Sullivan).