Budget Crunch

Well, this looks to be it. I haven't said much about it, mostly before now but the state of Michigan, the state of my birth, has been in a deep financhial crisis for a while now. It might not be as easy to talk about fiscal policy as it is about break points and dramatic license, but one of the nation's fifty states going into shutdown mode because they can't balance the checkbook is kinda serious, don't you think? The Michigan legislature is trying, right now, to work out a deal to avoid that but, if they don't, then the government grinds to a halt at the end of the month.

That the Great Lakes State should be in these dire straights doesn't come as a surprise. Michigan is place that's been slowly bleeding population away to other, more successful areas for years now. Stories like my own brother's are all too common; a bright, talented engineer who found absolutely no job offers in the state and, instead, left for greener pastures. He's in the sunbelt now. You think he's coming back? You think he's going to start looking for a job at some bloated auto maker and return to deal with our winters and weather instead of getting in on the ground floor of the green revolution in sunny California? He's gone. My brother's gone for good. And his youth, his intelligence, his enthusiasm is gone with him. Along with him went the payroll and property taxes and federal funding and more. That drain of people, the poor performance of Michigan's home grown industries, the end of the tobacco settlement monies pouring into the coffers, it's all contributed to falling revenues.

I don't even know where to start with a solution here. All I know is that things are scary and going to get scarier yet. Michigan, while not the greatest state in the union, was a fixture of, let's say the top half. Dropping in and out of the top fifth. A big state. An influential state. An important state. But that was back when it seemed like what was good for GM was good for the world. Now, it's on the verge of collapse, of obsolesce, and worse, irrelevance as its fortunes continue to fade. And now, our representative are heading to the capitol dome to decide just how deep the cuts are going to be. Just how bad the blood letting that needs to be performed to save the patient. Because the alternative is even worse. Because if the branch of the Michigan Congress – evenly divided split Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate with a Democratic Governor in former rising star Jennifer Granholm (Remember when people talked about repealing, amending the 2nd Article so she could run for President some day? A time before the Party found Obama. She was dragged down by the utter failure, the abject despair in the state that's arguably suffered the most the past few years. We've got a higher rate of unemployment, a higher rate of foreclosures, a higher rate of layoffs than nearly anyone else. By whatever measure you want to make, Michigan's economic climate ranks among the worst.) - if they can't find a compromise it means a screeching halt to the business of the Secretary of State, the courts, the various charities and aid foundations that people rely on.

And the frightening thing here is that it looks like they're not going to make that compromise. That an agreement won't be reached because of whatever petty bickering and ideological concerns are keeping those politicians from working the problem instead of the polls. I have my fingers crossed that good sense and self-preservation will win out, and some kind of gutwrenching cut to services or gutclenching raise to taxes can be found that will get us past this crisis point. But I can't be certain.

There are a few elements at play here that have brought us to this point and they, I think, stem from the Contract With America days of the conservative resurgence. A movement that's, after nearly 15 years of running this country into the ground, been thoroughly discredited by now. Proving, once again, that modern conservatism is an ideology for winning elections, not for governing. Why people even credit their ideas anymore is beyond me.

But, those factors are the constitutional requirement that Michigan, like a lot of other states, must have a balanced budget. And term limits which cap the number of years elected officials can spend in office.

The first factor means that at the end of the fiscal year or however the state divides up the calender, the legislature has to have a budget in place where expenses don't exceed revenue. They can't be in the red, period, or the entire system shuts down. This might sound like a good idea because the concept one shouldn't spend more than one has is good, common sense advice. But there's another word for exceeding your revenues and that's going into debt. As someone with a mortgage and a credit card can tell you, not all debt is bad. If you eventually pay it off, of course (A problem the federal government which, by the way, lacks a balanced budget amendment, thankfully, constantly has.), then you're using that debt to buy your way out of your present financial crunch in the hopes of being able to afford it in the better days to come. Another way of putting it is "priming the pump", a pretty established concept in economics because even I've heard about it. You have to spend money to make money, in order to get returns you have to invest, and when a state's in economic trouble is often the best time to start breaking the budget and ramping up massive debts. Because it's the time that the people of that state most need those extra funds. Instead of fiscal restraint, instead of tying our hands when a crisis arises, what we is fiscal responsibility. Representatives and politicians who are going to take care of the public's funds wisely, to use them for the greater good, or else face repercussions.

We don't have that, of course, because of the second factor, term limits. In Michigan you're restricted to three terms in the State House, or six years, and two four year terms in the State Senate. Again, that seems like a common sense good idea because you don't want those rotten crooks, those career politicians to just sit there living high off the hog forever. And with gerrymandering and the incumbent advantage, it's very hard to unseat all but the most unpopular legislators. A term limit would seem to offer a solution because it means, like the military, like a corporation, it's up or out. You either do well and advance your career by running for higher office, or you have to find work elsewhere. But government isn't a place for simply results and careerism, it's also a repository for wisdom and experience. Qualities that take years of practice and hard work to gather. I know it's hard to believe but some of the people in the legislature are hard working, public servants, who are trying to do the best for their constituents. The thing is that you don't want to get rid of all politicians, just the bad ones. And the fact that it's hard to do so at the ballot box means we need to look at all the ways our elections have been perverted over the years instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead of forcing out all that political experience and clout, and shoving it across the street where instead of moving on to the private sector, to teaching jobs at universities, or anywhere it might do some real good, it winds up attached to the increasingly powerful lobbying houses. Those are the real gravy train for ex-legislators who get to use their contacts and knowledge of how to work the system and get a big, fat paycheck while doing it without all the accountability and scrutiny of public office.

Late Update: I've been holding off on posting his in hopes that some late news would break. But none yet, it's the same old stand-off. Working into the night, the House is no closer to even passing a bill at this point. Looks like October 1st is going to be a quiet day for my home state.