House budget points to day of reckoning

GOV. MARK SANFORD’S unprecedented attempt to surgically carve out those state programs that were not absolutely essential created the best conditions we likely will ever see to test the following supposition: that we can fund our essential needs without raising taxes; that we can do it by “cutting the fat,” or by going further and eliminating the merely nonessential.

Mr. Sanford found 271 things to cut and managed to keep most essential services intact. But his budget provided far less money than we need to provide all of our children an opportunity to get a good education; by some estimates, he came up as much as $400 million short — a huge shortfall in a $5 billion budget.

The second, critical step in the budget process offers even less hope that the theory will pass the test.

At first glance, the Ways and Means Committee budget that the House takes up Tuesday appears to have avoided further degrading our state’s ability to deliver services at the current level without raising taxes. But even with extra money, schools remain underfunded.

Glaring as it is, that failure pales in comparison with the time bomb the Ways and Means plan sets ticking.

While the budget makes only minor cuts to most agencies and gives some generous increases to several important functions, it does so only by tapping $270 million from property sales and other pots of money that won’t be available next year. And unlike previous years, the committee has made it clear that it has no intention of replacing that one-time money next year.

Here’s what that means: The Mental Health Department would face another 20 percent cut next year. The Juvenile Justice Department is in line for a 10 percent cut, DHEC 11 percent; SLED’s budget would be cut by 7 percent, the Department of Public Safety’s 6 percent. Just six agencies would be spared such cuts next year.

House budget writers resorted to this temporary stay because they rejected Mr. Sanford’s most significant cuts — from shutting down underutilized colleges and refocusing Clemson PSA to privatizing golf courses and consolidating Highway Patrol dispatch offices — and failed to come up with specific cuts to take their place.

There is only one way to read this: as a tacit acknowledgment that the Ways and Means Committee cannot find enough expendable programs and services to save the money needed to pay for essential services.

Committee members’ blithe plans to cut even more deeply into core state programs next year is not acceptable; it is not even comprehensible.

These agencies do not provide optional services; we cannot whittle them away without doing irreparable harm. Mental Health treats dangerously mentally ill people, and when it can’t afford to treat them all, they either remain, untreated, in our communities, or else they wind up in our hospital emergency rooms, and we all pay higher insurance rates. When the Highway Patrol is cut, more people die on our roads. The Department of Social Services is the last line of defense for abused children. As long as we lock up people, we must spend money to operate our prisons safely.

Unless the full House or the Senate manages to identify more programs that we can do without, and finds the political will to eliminate them — if indeed Mr. Sanford’s proposal turns out to be the high-water mark in how much we can save by completely rethinking the way we look at government — then we will have no choice but to conclude that we must raise taxes.