Numbers Divide: The Battle Over State Spending

By Dan Gorenstein on Thursday, June 25, 2009.

Now that lawmakers have passed a budget, Republicans and Democrats are vying to win the war of spin.

Democrats insist they’ve acted responsibly, made tough cuts and held the line on spending.

Republicans knock the proposal, saying the majority party has pushed through a reckless plan that actually increases spending at a time when other states are cutting back.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports on the numbers game.

It’s not easy to follow the political football that is the budget spending increase.

TAPE: this budget increases general fund spending by 7.7%

TAPE: general fund spending is down 1.1% compared to this biennium.

TAPE: you have a general fund increase of 6.6%.

TAPE: it is a level funded budget.

And that’s just four opinions...coming from Republican Representative Neal Kurk, Governor John Lynch, Republican Senator Peter Bragdon and Democratic Representative Dan Eaton respectively.

Obviously both parties are trying to get the upper hand in this argument.

Republicans want to crack Lynch’s popularity and try to regain control of at least one Legislative chamber by tarring the majority party as out-of-control spenders.

Democrats want credit for passing a budget without a game changer- a broad-based tax or gambling- at a historically bad economic time.

To tweak estimates to their liking, the political parties have made different decisions about what should and shouldn’t be factored into the equation.

Here’s what Democrats do.

They are taking money that’s traditionally been part of the general fund off the books.

Specifically, money for the Liquor Commission.

They also don’t count $87 million dollars for school building aid, because lawmakers chose to bond that expense instead.

It doesn’t stop there.

Democrat’s math preserves $150 million dollars from the budget they passed two years ago that since has been cut.

Steve Norton of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies says that’s the party’s recipe for claiming a level funded budget this time around.

TAPE: if you just looked at general fund appropriations, what does that look like, it looks like a 1% reduction. If you look at those other moving targets, it gets to be a 5-5.5% increase.

Charlie Arlinghaus from the free market think tank, the Josiah Bartlett Center says it’s ridiculous to claim state spending- different than general fund spending- didn’t go up.

TAPE: look it increases spending. It may not increase it as much as an average year. It may be a more modest increase. But there is no question it’s an increase.

Arlinghaus and the Center for Public Policy’s Steve Norton agree on a few numbers.

As Arlinghaus said, in recent times, state spending has gone up about 11% over the two year biennium.

The budget that just passed goes up between 5-6% over the two years.

Norton says he would prefer to see politicians adopt some agreed upon protocols for talking about spending..

TAPE: I think that’s probably best for the policy makers and also the best thing for the public because then they can truly understand the decision making and its implications for tax policy and the state in general.

But Norton concedes, in a process as inherently political as state budgeting that’s probably wishful thinking.