The sky is falling in Maryland - at least if you listen to politicians and bureaucrats that are still addicted to bloated budgets, even in a recession. The Maryland Legislature failed to pass a tax bill during this year's regular session and Governor O'Malley is looking to resolve the resulting budget issues during a special session. If a special session does not occur, just over $500 million in cuts would automatically be enacted July 1^st. Democratic legislators have hyperbolically labeled this scenario the "doomsday budget."

This sort of political rhetoric makes serious budget discussions difficult. In what universe would $500 million in cuts from a $35.4 billion budget be a doomsday scenario? Perhaps for Democratic lawmakers set on raising taxes again, the failure of their bill was a disappointment - but the end of the world? Hardly.

Of course, interest groups that stand to be even slightly affected by the cuts are eager to fan the doomsday flames in hopes of getting themselves the funding that they deserve by birthright. One such imperiled entity is the University of Maryland Baltimore County, which faces a $5 million cut. Mind you, we're talking about a $5 million cut from a $355 million budget that has steadily risen since at least 1995 when it was $130 million. In protest of this travesty a UMBC professor wrote the Baltimore Sun a letter titled "UMBC excellence imperiled by 'doomsday." The letter describes the horrors going on over at the University: "UMBC faculty and staff have not had even a cost-of-living increase in three years, and students are facing serious tuition increases." The humanity.

 Marylanders are clamoring for lawmakers to get in there and fix this problem! In reality, the best thing the Maryland legislature could probably do is to stay home.

Comment(s)

http://www.examiner.com/article/maryland-s-real-doomsday-budget This link discusses the infection in Maryland that keeps pumping funds to the underserved at the expense of guess who, the taxpayer. The cure is obvious but O'Malley is keeping the serum from us. Mark Davis MD author of Demons of Democracy

posted by : Mark
Saturday, May 12, 2012 at 04:03 PM  | Permalink

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