DFLers Are Morons
by Dave
While the headline may sound inflammatory, I’m starting to believe it’s true. Earlier tonight I saw a commercial for Matt Entenza, one of the DFL candidates for Minnesota’s gubernatorial race. One of his main statements in the ad was that it’s time for us to “invest in our schools.” Perhaps Mr. Entenza should take a look at the 2010-11 General Fund Projected Spending graph.
We (and I mean you and me; the state doesn’t have any money–it’s ours) are projected to spend 14.46 billion dollars on education (that’s K-12 and higher ed) in the current budget. That amount represents 46.5% of the state’s budget. We can logically infer from Mr. Entenza’s statement that 46.5% is not enough. This is where I start to lose faith in the logic, if not the intelligence, of DFLers and any person who is ever-so-eager to jump on the “we’re not spending enough on the children” bandwagon. How much is enough?
Of course, asking this question begs the response that I must hate children and my priorities are horribly misplaced. To those who might rush to such a statement, let’s get a little bit more perspective courtesy of the budget pie chart. Public Safety (people love to complain about not having enough police) is slated to receive only 5.8% of the budget. Transportation (people love to complain about the poor conditions of the roads) is scheduled to receive a paltry 0.6% this biennium. Economic Development (all we need to say here is ‘recession’) is looking at 0.9%. Even the State Government (which I believe is bloated and rife with waste) is only allotted 2.1%. I do not hate children. I have one with another on the way. I want them to be well educated. However, standing up in front of the taxpayers and repeating the tired slogan that we’re not spending enough on education defies logic and the reality of the economic situation we are currently in.
The answer is that there is no such thing as enough. We could spend 100% of our budget on education and DFLers would still campaign on the platform that we need to invest in our schools, and the additional revenue should come from the wealthy, because people who make money are evil and must have gained it in some shady fashion. Ok, perhaps the end of that last statement was a cheap shot (though it seems to be a recurring theme among liberals in my experience).
That’s why raising taxes doesn’t make any sense; there is no such thing as enough (for anything). Trim the fat before you even think about coming to me for more. Even if we left the sacred cow of education alone, there is plenty of trimming to be done. The second-largest budget expenditure (Health & Human Services, aka entitlement programs) will receive 29% of the general fund. Of course, you’d be hard pressed to find a DFLer who would be willing to risk cuts to entitlement programs, thereby cutting into their voter base.
My original assertion (see the above title) stems from my frustration with the inability of DFLers to grasp the situation at hand. They are all too eager to spend other people’s money on their utopian visions with no thought for the practicality of such ventures or the unintended consequences of doing so. What logical person can say with a straight face that, while facing a large budget short-fall, spending nearly half the budget on a single item is not enough? I only hope the public has woken up enough to realize these types of claims are folly. I would hate to see our great state end up in a similar situation as that of California.
