Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned 127 on January 30 but is on people’s tongues. President Obama cites his leadership during the Depression as a model for himself; critics say many of the New Deal’s policies prolonged the Depression. All can agree that Roosevelt framed his purposes perfectly: “Relief, recovery and reform,” in that order. Whatever the effect of Mr. Obama’s stimulus package, he has miscategorized it. It may be relief, but it isn’t recovery and it certainly isn’t reform.
A few Republican governors are making noises about refusing some of the stimulus money. In Massachusetts, refusing money is not our politicians’ chosen way of committing political suicide — it’s quite the other way around. Here, doubts remain but the debate is over. Our leaders will soon get their hands on the first down payment on our grandchildren’s Social Security. The question is how the state will use it. Shall this relief be used to help return Massachusetts to fiscal health, so that the state may be more competitive in the global economy when recovery comes? Or, shall the money be spent rewarding interest groups and funding every influential politician’s pet project and personal monument?
I will only prophesy that if it be the latter this is what will follow: We will have between $6 and $11.7 billion dollars gone; state and municipal budgets still unbalanced; a biggest-in-the nation gas-tax increase as well as Turnpike toll increases; a transportation-financing deficit still projected to be $15 billion or more unto 2020; a promise of reform still unkept; and, finally, if past be prelude, retrospective recriminations and criminal investigations like the still unfinished business of the Big Dig. Is there a better way?
If we posit the state’s finding $6 billion unrestricted dollars like the “bank error in your favor” in the charming game of Monopoly, prudent fiscal use of it would indicate some of the following:
* Restoring cuts in local aid and human services — the curtailing of the latter of which puts the burden of recession on the poorest of the poor.
* Balancing the 2009 and 2010 budgets without increasing fees or taxes.
* Replenishing the “Rainy Day Fund.”
* Paying cash for vaunted “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, rather than bonding them.
* Moving permanent transportation employees from the capital budget, where they are typically paid with interest-carrying bonded funds, to the operating budget.
* Honoring the now 20-year-old promise to return the state income tax to five percent.
Doing these things would turn business heads around the world. But using borrowed federal funds to delimit irresponsible state borrowing is contrary to the spirit of the current panic — as recessions were fairly called in the 19th Century. The stimulus bill wants groundbreakings and its restricted funds can’t generally be used to prepare to challenge future groundbreakings in competing places such as the state Georgia or the country of Estonia, to name two. What I suggest is, at the moment, politically laughable.
The “panic” we are in is best seen as the deserts of living beyond our means as corporations, as individuals and as government at all levels. The danger is that the federal stimulus will serve to let state government off the hook and enable it to carry on as usual. What, for example, is to be the outcome of two years of chatter about transportation financing that began with the March 28, 2007 report by the Transportation Finance Commission — projecting a $15 to $19 billion, 20-year shortfall against a “must-do” wish list of transportation projects? While mendaciously and ungraciously asserting that infrastructure was ignored before his own arrival, Governor Patrick has used this report to float several tax schemes. A gas tax hike in exchange for eliminating tolls on the Turnpike? The biggest gas tax in the nation in return for “reform”? A computer trip surcharging miles driven? (The last is an attack on those in the second income quintile living in outlying parts of the state.)
Like all trial balloons these are hot air. The two transportation budget-guzzlers are the MBTA and the Turnpike, which account for 60 percent of state transportation spending. With their legislative enablers, both authorities are bigger than most governors. The MBTA is a wreck — a septic mix of personnel abuses and tax-dollar misuses. The Turnpike spends almost as much to run one highway as MassHighway spends to run all the rest. Transferring the functions of the latter to the former would, it is believed, effect deep savings against the supposed 20-year financing shortfall.
Senate President Therese Murray has said, “Reform now, money later.” Governor Patrick is saying, “Money now, reform later.” This, from a governor who so far has proven weaker than stronger governors who themselves were weaker than the “abuses and misuses,” is to be taken to mean, “Money now — reform never!”
The saying is that a lock doesn’t stop a thief, a lock only keeps an honest man honest. The leaders we are dealing with are not insincere. But we need to keep them honest by citing the federal stimulus money as reason enough to put a lock on their tax schemes until we see their reforms. That isn’t laughable, it is our solemn duty to the Commonwealth.
