Expenditures: May 2008 Archives

By KEVIN LANDRIGAN Staff Writer
klandrigan@nashuatelegraph.com

CONCORD – The two possible Republican candidates for governor signed a pledge that would cap state spending at the rate of inflation plus population growth.

Sen. Joseph Kenney, R-Wakefield, charged that Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. John Lynch are bent on spending the state into needing a broad-based sales or income tax.

"We are being backed into an income or sales tax by this spending," Kenney told reporters.

"They want an income tax; there is no doubt about that."

Leaders of the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition insisted the pledge is meant to dovetail with – not dilute – the vaunted pledge to veto a broad-based sales or income tax.The group is staging a drive to get a local spending-cap petition before the voters in several communities across the state, including Merrimack.

Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta said lawmakers "fleeced" taxpayers by increasing state spending by 17 percent in the two-year state budget that concludes June 30, 2009.

Asked to give an example of the excess, however, Guinta offered a proposed reform of the state retirement system that GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenney voted for earlier this month.

"That's an example of fleecing the taxpayers," Guinta said.

The Senate passed its retirement reform proposal (HB 1645), 24-0. Kenney said he voted yes only to get it to a negotiated settlement that he hopes will generate a better, final product for taxpayers.

As the Memorial Day recess rapidly approaches, Senate Democrats last night scrapped the version of the supplemental war funding bill they initially brought up on Tuesday. Democrats have been trying to find a way to “load up” the bill with more than $28 billion in extra spending over the next two years, according to the AP.  Fortunately, one of the provisions that fell by the wayside was work permits for immigrant farm laborers, but the bill, as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday, is still filled “with a raft of unrelated domestic spending projects and policy proposals.”

In an editorial today, National Review Online lays out the problems with the supplemental bill that Democrats have crafted, but as NRO writes, the bottom line is, “We should be able to fund our troops in the field without paying billions of dollars in ransom to Congress’s pet projects.”

The issue of the spending itself aside, Democrats’ insistence on larding up the bill with “veto bait” is only serving to delay passage of the funds our troops need. The Pentagon has indicated it must have the funding approved by the middle of June, otherwise “the Defense Department will be unable to make payroll for our uniformed Army,” as Sen. McConnell pointed out. NRO was clear about what the hold-up means: “[T]hanks to Senator Reid’s lacksidasical management, even this flawed piece of legislation will probably not be sent to the president until after Memorial Day — meaning that we’ll be honoring our veterans while leaving our active-duty troops in the lurch.”

While Democrats struggle to figure out what to do with the supplemental bill, conferees agreed to a conference report on the fiscal 2009 budget resolution, which the House is scheduled to consider today. Unfortunately, there is little improvement in the budget since it was last seen. According to the AP, “The House-Senate compromise, more than a month overdue, contains a host of shaky assumptions - and forecasts that many of President Bush's signature tax cuts will expire on schedule at the end of 2010.”

Sen. Judd Gregg, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee said yesterday, “This is a partisan budget crafted behind closed doors -- a budget that’s bad for taxpayers and bad for the economy. It includes the largest tax increase in history, blows through the $1 trillion mark in annual discretionary spending, and once again completely punts the urgent issue of entitlement spending reform.” Sen. McConnell added this morning, “American families can’t afford this budget. American job creators can’t afford this budget. And our economy can’t afford this budget.”

Despite facing a budget deficit of more than $250M, Democrats in the House Finance committee today ignored the impending financial crisis and added more than $130M in additional spending to the cost of an adequate education, passing SB 539 in a partisan vote. 

According to House Deputy Republican Leader David Hess of Hooksett, the bill violates every one of the Claremont decisions, from 2-13. “This bill is expensive, ineffective and blatantly unconstitutional,” said Hess. “It provides for an arbitrary cap on state aid, preventing any town from receiving more than 115% of their current state aid over the next biennium. As such, the bill costs an adequate education but then blatantly fails to fully fund it,” he added. 

“It marks the fifth time that the original bill, presented by Democrats on the Adequate Education Costing Committee, has been amended and each ‘fix’ has been worse than the previous one,” said Hess.  In referring to the legislation as the “son of ABC,” the first education funding bill passed under Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and quickly declared unconstitutional by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Hess warned that it would establish nearly 40 new donor towns. The legislation purports to hold the donor town harmless, which is exactly what the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in Gov. Shaheen’s original bill, and it contains absolutely no mechanism to send money back to the towns from the state.   “The Democrats have added more than $130M in spending with absolutely no idea of where the money is coming from,” concluded Hess.

Calling the bill “Alice in Wonderland” legislation last week on the floor of the House, Rep. Hess concluded that the bill, in its present form, is “even more strange.” 

Unless amended on the floor, the bill will now go to a Committee of Conference.