The Delaware vicious fiscal cycle

Coming soon to a government near you, too.

The state of Delaware has had single-party rule since 2009, when the Democrats overturned the previous GOP majority in its House to secure a trifecta of House, Senate, and Governor.

At the same time, according to Charlie Copeland of the Caesar Rodney Institute, the state continued on a maddening vicious circle of governance: new governor Jack Markell created a budget deficit from his ambitious new spending schemes just like his predecessor Ruth Ann Minner, then raised taxes to cover said deficit before blowing the wad just as he left office, leaving his successor (in this case, John Carney) to repeat the cycle.

But while Carney accomplished the initial steps of creating a deficit and raising taxes in 2017 as he entered office, the surplus has remained - not because of his prudent spending, but because Uncle Sam ladled millions of dollars Delaware’s way during the COVID scare. A state that had a budget of $4.1 billion in FY2018 (and addressed a $400 million budget deficit in Carney’s first budget) now has a proposed budget of nearly $5.5 billion. That’s an increase of about one-third in six years, yet our state didn’t grow that much and, until recently, inflation was pretty much kept in check.

Yet the state also touts its role in spending federal money to the tune of $925 million, on what it claims are “one-time funded” expenses. But how many of these items will eventually demand sustainable funding?

One good example of how that works: remember the “100,000 cops” Bill Clinton promised back in the day? It sounded great, didn’t it? These were “free” federal grants in the 1994 crime bill that perhaps helped the otherwise scandal-plagued Clinton win re-election two years later.

But while it sounded good, reality bit a few years later. As writer Steve Chapman would complain at Slate - no bastion of right-wing thought:

A 1999 audit by the Justice Department’s Inspector General reported “a high degree of difficulty in establishing that funds under the Making Office Redeployment Effective (MORE) program actually results in additional officers on the street. Specifically, 78 percent of the 67 grantees we audited with MORE grants could not demonstrate they had or would redeploy officers from administrative duties to the streets.” The IG also found evidence that many police departments have no plans to retain new hires once their federal funding runs out. Barring an endless flow of money from Washington, then, the number of cops may fall. (Emphasis mine.)

Similarly, the state of Delaware (and most other states, and the federal government) have placed themselves in a fiscally untenable position absent new or expanded tax revenue. To use the vernacular, their mouths are writing checks their asses can’t cover. If you’re wondering why inflation seems to be rampant, consider that we have dumped trillions of dollars into our economy through federal deficit spending, with a $925 million part of that debt being funneled to Joe Biden’s friends in Delaware. I’m not sure what excuse there otherwise would have been to provide this largesse to the state, and now you may understand why our so-called “state of emergency” drags on and on - it says so right in the recently-extended declaration:

…to ensure that the State of Delaware may access financial and other assistance from the federal government for the benefit of Delaware residents…

If we’re running a state budget surplus, as we’ve been told, why are we helping to place our great-grandkids into further federal debt slavery?

Our next governor needs two things: one, to be a great communicator of ideas, and two, to have a titanium spine. Back in 2016, one key reason I endorsed onetime Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal for President was that he actually slashed state spending in Louisiana by billions of dollars. I wrote this back in September 2015:

Now I’m aware of the report which was based on “experts” predicting Jindal would be next out. That would be a complete shame because out of all the candidates I can see Jindal being a modern-day Calvin Coolidge – reducing the budget in real terms (as he did in Louisiana), getting government out of the way, and bringing true prosperity back to the nation by allowing us to be an energy superpower.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get Jindal, and Donald Trump may have only gotten one and a half out of three - the Trump reduction in regulations (as in 22 out for each one created at one point) and the energy part, with Joe Biden doing his level best to cancel both.

But as I noted Jindal took the same sort of trail blazed by President Calvin Coolidge almost a century ago - in fact, the centennial of Coolidge’s ascension to President upon the death of Warren Harding will occur this coming August 2. Coolidge significantly cut a bloated postwar budget and reduced taxes.

And Coolidge is one of my favorite Presidents because he got it:

Unfortunately the Federal Government has strayed far afield from its legitimate business. It has trespassed upon fields where there should be no trespass. If we could confine our Federal expenditures to the legitimate obligations and functions of the Federal Government a material reduction would be apparent. But far more important than this would be its effect upon the fabric of our constitutional form of government, which tends to be weakened and undermined by this encroachment.

(…)

The cure for this is not in our hands. It lies with the people. It will come when they realize the necessity of State assumption of State responsibility. It will come when they realize that the laws under which the Federal Government hands out contributions to the States is placing upon them a double burden of taxation — Federal taxation in the first instance to raise the moneys which the Government donates to the States, and State taxation in the second instance to meet the extravagances of State expenditures which are tempted by the Federal donations. (Emphasis mine, but I’ll bet he said it forcefully, too.)

Welcome to Delaware, right? Or Maryland, or California, or most other states.

We need a governor and legislature that can tell the people that government couldn’t and shouldn’t be all things to all people - they need to have some skin in the game as well. There are some functions the government should do, but too often we become dependent on them to run our lives.

But if we elect another Democrat (or Mike Castle-style Republican) to the governor’s office next year, we’ll probably repeat this deficit-tax increase-spending increase-deficit cycle again over the next eight years. It won’t be the most pleasant medicine out there, but fiscal responsibility is a pill we’re going to have to swallow someday.