Radical Right Reality Check

Local right-wing group outdoes itself with annual budget proposal

One of the most common hypocrisies of modern public policy debates is the repeated and ever-confident assertion of various far right politicians and commentators that it's easy to slash government budgets by simply cutting "wasteful spending." Whether it's John McCain, Bobby Jindal, or Rush Limbaugh, the pattern is almost always the same: trot out a few examples of potentially controversial spending items (it usually helps if the items have a funny or unusual name or a scientific purpose that might actually take some effort to understand) or some other smaller item of public extravagance and then extrapolate like crazy.

Sometimes the anti-spending rant is accompanied by a vague or on-its-face-ridiculous call to eliminate a whole class of essential spending - e.g. "privatize Social Security." For the most part, however, these claims are usually long on bluster and short on actual, real world budget cut proposals.

This is primarily because even people like McCain (and maybe Jindal, but probably not Limbaugh) understand that to impose real cuts on the order of magnitude that matched their rhetoric would devastate all sorts of essential public systems and structures. The anti-government speechifying sounds good in the abstract, but in the real world, it mostly means taking the country (or the state or other local jurisdiction) backwards.

Turning back the clock

In light of all this, it's instructive to receive and review the recent alternative state budget published by the Locke Foundation. To their "credit," the authors have decided to go with Limbaugh's "consequences be damned" approach and spell out in some detail which services and systems they would slash or eliminate. Though it would produce horrific public policy, one has to hand it to the group for at least spelling out just how far they would turn back the state's clock.

From the looks of things, it would be to some point during the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower and Luther Hodges.

Here are just some of the dozens of specific, backward-looking recommendations:

(Actually, before reviewing some of the most absurd cuts, it should be noted that the Locke budget isn't without some plain old, glaring hypocrisy of its own. Perhaps most notable on this list is its use of federal stimulus money to underwrite its proposal to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in state appropriations. This is from the same group that has already produced editorial after editorial decrying the stimulus and praising those governors who have made noises about turning the money down.)

Now, back to the crazy cuts: For the most part, the report simply lists a spending line item and then casually eliminates it - sometimes with a word or two of explanation and sometimes not.

For instance, under the heading "Public Education" (p.8), the Locke budget completely eliminates, without any stated reason, the entire $8.3 million appropriation for the Teacher Mentor program. This is a simple and common sense program that provides a little extra compensation to veteran teachers who spend some dedicated time during their lunches or after hours with a rookie colleague. In a system that chews up and spits out new teachers with alarming frequency, such mentors can be an invaluable source of support and are a huge contributor to stability in the schools. That the Locke proposal simply zeroes the program out with no explanation is emblematic of the clumsy, myopic and often radical approach that runs through the entire "budget."   

Indeed, one can almost flip randomly throughout the document and find similar examples on nearly every page.

On Page 10, again under "Public Education: "Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Funding (DSSF) - Reduce to pre-2007 level." This would mean a cut in this vital program of more than $23.5 million. Why? On what grounds would someone propose cutting services to disadvantaged kids?

On page 11, under "Community Colleges": "Child Care Grants - End GF [General Fund] Appropriation." This would mean a reduction of nearly $2 million that's targeted at helping low-income parents become employable by attending community college. Apparently, the Locke Foundation would prefer that they simply stay at home (or maybe that their kids should stay home alone).

On page 14, under "UNC System": "Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) - Address need for family physicians through deregulation, not new schools." The proposed cut totals over $2.3 million per year. The entry doesn't even attempt to explain how "deregulation" and cutting AHEC could possibly increase the supply of family physicians when the "genius of the market" is already driving a disproportionate number of doctors into higher paying specialties like cosmetic surgery.

On page 19, under "Cultural Resources": "State Historic Sites - Cover 50% of Cost with Increased Donations/Fees." This amounts to a cut of more than $4.2 million in this important program and is particularly surprising from an organization that devotes so much time and energy (and so many events) to the celebration of old men in wigs and knee breeches.  

On page 23, under "Housing Finance Agency," the Locke budget would end state appropriations for the award winning and currently under-funded state Housing Trust Fund and the timely anti-foreclosure program known as the Home Protection Program. In attempting to justify these cuts of $14.6 million, the only explanation offered is a cryptic ""restore civil society." Huh?

And so it goes. Whether it's cuts to:

• services for the homeless (p. 36),
• services for the aged and disabled (p. 37-38),
• children's health insurance (which the proposal would "return…to FY2002-03 enrollment" (p. 46)  
• adolescent pregnancy prevention (p. 47),
• breast and cervical cancer control (p. 47),
• foster care and adoption services (p. 49),
• National Guard family assistance (p. 52),
• rape victim assistance (p. 52),
• the courts system (p. 53),
• food regulatory lab equipment (p. 57),
• workplace safety officers (p. 59),
• dozens of vital environmental initiatives (p. 60-62),
• public transportation - a 50% reduction (p. 67), or
• scores of other worthy programs that are slashed for no other reason than that they are comparatively new (what the report describes as a "Last in, First out" approach),

the proposal is a veritable "how to" list for taking North Carolina backwards to some point in its less prosperous, less healthy, less humane, and less enlightened past.            

Why bother to respond?

Given the painfully obvious flaws and limitations of the "Back to the 50's" budget, some might ask: "Why bother to give it any credence at all by responding?" This is a good question that we at NC Policy Watch are often asked by progressives.

The answer is simple: While the Locke budget may be plainly absurd to thinking people who pay attention to state policy matters, it is less obviously such to a lot of other people. The staffers who prepare it are outwardly sincere and affable and their product does, at least very superficially, give the impression of serious analysis. Moreover, because so few thinking people actually take the time to read through such pap, they (advocates, lawmakers, journalists) are often poorly equipped to directly counter broad assertions by conservative ideologues about the availability of "alternative spending models."

Thus, while few, if any, of the specific proposals will be taken seriously by the current General Assembly in the near term, over time, the sheer volume and frequency of the far right's messaging can have an impact in slowing or even reversing the tide of progress.

This is unless, of course, committed progressives continue to monitor such messages and expose them to scrutiny. At NC Policy Watch, we'll continue to keep an eye on the far right's mythmaking so that, hopefully, the 1950's will remain where they belong - in the societal rear view mirror.      

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 9:20 am and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.