February 21, 2010 11:35 PM UTC

A Flurry of Junk

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Durango Herald very astutely reports:

Don’t raise taxes. Cut spending instead. Start with the payroll.

That has been the Colorado Republican mantra during this year’s debate over tax increases.

Democrats have mocked the plan, with Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, offering to give Republicans a math book during debate this month. He even threw in the Cliff’s Notes.

Republicans counter that by cutting the payroll, Colorado could avoid 10 tax increases for candy, Internet sales, agriculture and more. Also, Republicans say, the state could afford to restore a tax break for senior citizen homeowners…

However, balancing the budget by cutting the state work force could succeed only by shutting down large parts of the government.

Here’s why.

One of Penry’s bills – Senate Bill 168 – calls for a $17.8 million cut to the state payroll from now through July. Next year, he would cut $307 million, first by cutting the payroll and next by ending “nonessential” programs.

Almost all state government spending goes to education, health care, prisons and courts, and very little of the education and health-care budgets are spent on state employees…

When all the subtraction is done, the May 2009 payroll that came from the general fund in the governor’s departments was only $590 million.

That means Penry’s $17.8 million cut would cause a pay cut of nearly 10 percent if it took effect March 1. Next year, he’s looking for a $306 million cut – a number he admits can’t be found through pay cuts alone…

“If you cut personnel … you’ve got to shut something down. If you’re going to lay off prison guards, you’ve got to close a prison,” said Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, vice chairwoman of the Joint Budget Committee. “It isn’t like we have employees just hanging out doing nothing.”

“Cutting payroll” is a slogan the GOP has seized on because it doesn’t convey the actual pain of what they are proposing: just like Sen. Keller says, these employees are doing jobs that won’t be done done once they are cut. “Cutting payroll” may sound a little better than “closing a prison,” but it’s basically the same thing. What’s more, in many cases the jobs in question are funded by fees or federal funds, making the “savings” from cutting them illusory. That, combined with the much larger GOP budget-cutting proposal for next year that mostly doesn’t specify where the cuts are to be made, and this just isn’t a serious plan, folks. Not that it was intended to be–the only purpose of any of this is posturing for the elections, where sound bites trump reason.