LEGISLATURE’S FINAL EXAM

Acute legislative politicking has again extended into June, a time of final exams and report cards. This is the work of largely the same Legislature that last year got failing marks on a tax-relief plan, forcing Maine into multiple referendum votes and a lot of needless confusion over various remedies. Lawmakers cannot let this happen again with the next state budget. They need to quickly reach a deal, an idea that most already understand but few are willing to acknowledge.

Bond houses, on the other hand, have more than acknowledged the state’s lack of reserves and relative abundance of spending demands. Standard & Poor’s recently joined Moody’s and Fitch in downgrading Maine’s bonds, a small cost to the state’s borrowing but a large smack to its ego. More of these sorts of economic insults will afflict Maine unless lawmakers quickly get together over a sensible plan to reduce the amount of borrowing in the next budget and squarely face Maine’s difficult economic situation.

For Democrats, that means getting over the fact that Republicans earlier considered a 5 percent across-the-board cut. Majority Democrats have been trying ever since to punish Republicans by demonstrating the awful kinds of cuts that are possible under that level of reduction, but all they’ve done is make the public impatient with Augusta generally. They need to move on. The 5 percent idea is dead for this session and further beatings will not bring it back to life.

Republicans have an obligation to offer a percent cut that will let them drop support for the People’s Veto, a citizen’s initiative that would, if approved by voters, slice off a $447 million loan from the next biennium’s budget. At issue is only about $250 million of that borrowing – roughly equal to 5 percent of the budget – but legislators are not going to responsibly eliminate that in the next two weeks. Would 2 percent do it? That would allow Republicans to make their point about borrowing and reduce the budget as well. And it’s much preferable to replaying their strategy on bonds last year when they said no to any compromise and became mere obstructionists.

Saving 5 percent from the state budget would have been possible, but only if lawmakers had treated the task with the seriousness it deserved and took months to examine the range of potential savings. Instead, they have spent their time accusing the other party of bad behavior and now have only two weeks left to agree on budget cuts. The final exam approaches; a bipartisan study session is in order.