The Conservative Republican Effect: Budget Surplus

Mark Noonan

From The Washington Times:

…At least a dozen states ended fiscal 2011 with surpluses. Indiana reported one of the largest, with an extra $1.2 billion in its accounts. Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, on Friday authorized bonus payments of up to $1,000 for state employees…

…While Indiana decided to reward its employees, other states are redirecting surplus funds into cash-strapped areas such as education. Idaho ended the year with an $85 million surplus, the majority of which will be funneled to public schools and colleges, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, said in a statement last week.

Other states are bulking up their savings accounts. Maine finished the year with a surplus of nearly $50 million. About half will go to the state’s reserve, the Bangor Daily News reported. Iowa closed its books with $480 million left over, on top of an already healthy “rainy day fund.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, on Sunday touted the fact that since taking office in January, he has helped the Buckeye State turn its deficit into a surplus…

All it takes is the courage to cut – to be sure, State revenues have increased over the past year, but the real source of the surplus is the fact that these Republican governors went after spending.  And that not only saved money directly, but also by its nature helped to free up their State economies, resulting in more wealth creation.  That, in turn, provided more revenues.  It is a wonderful cycle, if you can just get it started.  Trouble is, no liberal Democrat ever can – because no liberal Democrat will ever consider genuine cuts in spending.

I would caution these governors, though, not to get too cocky – the latent effects of Obamunism are piling up and we may well wind up at the end of 2011 in recession.  If that happens, even the best managed States will feel the pinch – better to keep cutting spending and/or taxes right now so that if there is another down turn it can more easily be weathered.  Let the liberal, Democrat States take their just punishment when Obamunism finally fails…they have been using fiscal hocus pocus to cover deficits and are counting on Kenynesian economics to magically increase their revenues before the chickens come home to roost.  Let them stew in that and let the Republican governed States shine as a beacon to a better future.

What we are seeing now is the grandest of all political experiments.  Liberalism and conservatism are governing and we are swiftly seeing the actual effects of each.  This period of our history – which is hard and likely to get even harder before it improves – may be the watershed.  It may, once and for all, lay to rest the notion that government is the answer.  Time will tell – our job is to just keep pressing the conservative, Republican program.  The more we do it, the better things will be and the more likely the people will turn to us.

10 thoughts on “The Conservative Republican Effect: Budget Surplus”

    • Cluster's avatar Cluster July 20, 2011 / 10:11 am

      CBS poll?

      Next

    • neocon1's avatar neocon1 July 20, 2011 / 12:22 pm

      scummy

      wasnt it YOU who was yapping about Breightbart?
      do da name dan blather ring a familiar note?

  2. Retired Spook's avatar RetiredSpook July 20, 2011 / 10:09 am

    My governor, Mitch Daniels pulled off one of the sweetest coups ever early in his first term when he leased the Indiana Toll Road to a foreign consortium for 75 years for $3.8 billion up front. Democrats squealed like stuck pigs, even though the toll road had consistently lost money. Turns out it worked out pretty well, but not before signs of “DITCH MITCH” appeared all over the state. In 2008, while Obama was providing the first Democrat presidential win in Indiana since 1964, Mitch won a second term in 2008 by 18 points.

  3. Cluster's avatar Cluster July 20, 2011 / 10:10 am

    Idaho ended the year with an $85 million surplus, the majority of which will be funneled to public schools and colleges, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, said in a statement last week.

    So conservatives do support public education. They just support the responsible way. Good to know.

  4. Retired Spook's avatar RetiredSpook July 20, 2011 / 10:19 am

    Sunny,

    http://tinyurl.com/3ouxhlq

    I’ll admit it: When I glanced over the bottom-line results of this survey, I was tempted to just throw up my hands and pack it in. According to the numbers, 71 percent of voters disapprove of Republican efforts to uphold their central campaign promise on taxes and spending — indicating that Democrats’ deliberate and repeated refusal to offer any concrete solutions has won the day. Confronted with these deeply depressing results, I reckoned that we’re so screwed that I flirted with the notion of leaving work, grabbing a slurpee, and sitting by the pool for the rest of the week. But then I recalled a salient fact: This is a CBS News poll. Roughly translated, “additional investigation is warranted.” Upon further review, the fine print, survey sample, and wording of this poll render it far less alarming than I initially assumed, for four reasons — the fourth of which is most important:

    (1) The weighted sample gives Democrats a +11 party ID edge. As a point of reference, in the 2010 House elections, Republicans won the popular vote by seven percentage points. Admittedly, this is far from an ideal apples-to-apples comparison, but it raises questions about how CBS settled on this absurd sample breakdown. Even in the great Obama wave of 2008, Democrats didn’t even approach a +11 partisan advantage.

    (2) CBS surveyed adults; not likely, or even registered, voters. It’s widely accepted that polls of adults are far less predicitive of real electoral or political outcomes, as they solicit opinions from many more unattached, uninformed, and uninvolved Americans. In other words, if Joe Smith — who pays no attention to politics and doesn’t vote — decides Republicans are the bad guy in the complex debt ceiling fracas, John Boehner probably isn’t going to lose much sleep over Mr. Smith’s verdict.

    (3) In their write-up of the poll, CBS mentions that fully 51 percent of the Republicans they actually deigned to survey responded that they disapprove of their own party’s actions in this debate. What we don’t know is, why? Are half of all Republicans holding out hope that Boehner, Cantor, McConnell & Co will cave on tax hikes? Last week’s Rasmussen poll suggests that hypothesis is…unlikely. Or could it be that quite a few Republicans are upset that GOP leaders haven’t demanded deeper cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling? Or that some Republicans don’t support any raise of the debt limit, and are dismayed that their party’s leadership has all but conceded that point from day one? Or that other Republicans are put off by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s convoluted contigency plan that reeks of insider politics (which is not a commentary on its merits)? As the internals indicate, independents are pretty damn unimpressed with both parties’ approach to these deliberations. Democrats’ numbers are boosted by far greater loyalty among their own party faithful. Why? We don’t know.

    (4) In response to point three, defenders of this poll may argue that since it didn’t endeavor to address the question of “why,” my criticism is unfair. This would be a compelling point if CBSNews.com’s story about the poll (you know, the one with the big, damaging headline for Republicans) didn’t feature this lede:

    Americans are unimpressed with their political leaders’ handling of the debt ceiling crisis, with a new CBS News poll showing a majority disapprove of all the involved parties’ conduct, but Republicans in Congress fare the worst, with just 21 percent backing their resistance to raising taxes.

    There is absolutely zero statistical evidence supporting this claim, yet it’s enshrined in CBS’ opening graf. Yes, only 21 percent of the public (based on the skewed sample — see points 1 and 2) approve of Congressional Republicans’ handling of the debt negotiations, but the poll itself does not mention the word “taxes” — or even the more Democrat-friendly term, “revenues.” As established in point three above, CBS’ poll doesn’t ask why Americans disapprove of the GOP’s approach to this issue. And yet, this fact didn’t stop CBS from simply inventing and assigning a reason — which conveniently aligns with the Democrat-media complex’s established meme: These damned intransigent Republican wingnuts are nihilistic extremists!

    • Count d'Haricots's avatar Count d'Haricots July 20, 2011 / 11:32 am

      I believe that poll was conducted in the CBS Newsroom.

      • neocon1's avatar neocon1 July 20, 2011 / 12:19 pm

        count
        OR
        the CBS restroom

    • neocon1's avatar neocon1 July 20, 2011 / 3:56 pm

      so much for RINO mcconnell

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