April 23, 2009 09:30 PM UTC

The Last Bastion Of "No"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

Though House Republicans had no trouble Wednesday accepting cuts and cash fund transfers that budget writers came up with to balance next year’s $17.9 billion spending plan, their counterparts in the Senate just plain didn’t like them.

GOP senators said the Joint Budget Committee that ultimately approved about $300 million in cuts and transfers to prevent a huge cut to higher education just wasn’t enough…

“What I’m disappointed in is that rather than going in and making some of those tough choices in a substantial way, we relied on a new set of gimmicks and one-time funding sources that only serve to kick the can down the road,” said Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Fruita. “If you do the math on how we plugged the $300 million shortfall, the overwhelming majority of it is through one-time gimmicks, cash fund transfers or tax increases. At some point we are going to have to make tough choices.”

…Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, chastised Penry for calling them gimmicks, saying the state isn’t like a business that can cut staff and reduce production. The state has obligations that must be funded, even if there’s no money to do it, he said.

“Government provides things like justice and equity and fairness and representativeness,” Morse said. “But according to the arguments we’ve heard so far, that’s only in the good times. In the bad times, well then justice, we don’t really value that. Let’s only have 96 or 97 percent justice or equity. Sorry, boys and girls, but the reality is government has to do what it does 24/7.”

After everything we’ve talked about this session related to the endless and frequently mendacious naysaying from the Senate Minority and Josh Penry in particular (as usual the only GOP Senator being quoted, why we’re talking about him, get a pre-emptive grip on your faux outrage please), there’s really no additional commentary needed–except to point out, as the Chieftain did, that not even the House Republicans are subsidizing this crap anymore.

But all of that aside, all the Senate Republicans have to do is say, “This is our proposal.” But they don’t do that. What are these “tough choices” that Penry talks about? What cuts are not being made? They just complain about everything presented without offering up their own solutions, and that’s not a good strategy for 2010.