Spinning the budget

In passing a $3.9 billion partisan biennial budget, Gov. Angus King and legislative Democrats have chosen to use their power to take a huge political gamble on the health of the Maine economy, the memories of Maine voters and their own skills as spin doctors. If the economy sours and a budget gap develops, Democrats will have to make cuts without any Republican help.

Maine voters might hold the governor and Democrats accountable for these power plays in 1998. On the other hand, the governor and Speaker Elizabeth Mitchell are superb spin doctors, able to escape accountability and blame Republicans with a single pithy phrase.

The nearly 8 percent increase in spending over the last biennium might label the Democrats as big spenders and severely tarnish the governor’s credentials as a fiscal conservative. The use of majority status and parliamentary legerdemain to freeze out the minority may come back to haunt Democrats at the polls and/or in future legislative sessions. The governor’s rhetoric for consensus, compromise and non-partisanship looks pretty hypocritical.

The budget assumes that sales and income tax revenues will continue to grow at almost double digit rates. That kind of blind faith led to huge spending increases in the 1980’s. When Gov. King runs for re-election in 1998, he will have presided over more than a half billion dollar increase in state spending. When the revenue spigot ran dry in the late 1980s, the resulting tumult eventually changed the face of Augusta. The more things change… Jon Reisman Cooper