Snyder, Bernero on their budget plans

Susan Demas of the Center for Michigan spoke to the campaigns of Democrat Virg Bernero and Republican Rick Snyder to get their ideas on how to fix Michigan’s systemic problem of yearly budget deficits, compiling the results into a special report. The bottom line: Neither candidate has any serious proposals for fixing the problem.

When facing a budget deficit there are only two choices: Raise revenues or cut spending. Since both Bernero and Snyder have already ruled out any tax increases, they’ve taken half their options off the table already. And since we’ve already lost $10 billion in revenue over the last decade and already cut nearly that much in spending, there isn’t all that much left to cut.

Both campaigns talk about increasing efficiencies. Snyder first:

Snyder stresses his focus isn’t on making budget cuts, but making government more efficient.

“Right now, the government looks at how much was spent last year, adds a little bit on for inflation and calls it good,” Nowling said. “Nowhere in that process did anyone look at whether taxpayers are getting value for their money. Rick believes we should stop funding programs that aren’t delivering results and put more resources behind those that are.”

Which is equivalent to saying that Snyder is in favor of good things and opposed to bad things. Now Bernero:

When asked about specific reforms they would enact, both gubernatorial hopefuls talked generally about eliminating waste. Snyder calls his concept “Value for Money” budgeting, which means prioritizing spending programs based on results. Similarly, Bernero has pledged to conduct a forensic audit of state spending.

“We will implement a state-level version of Lansing’s successful performance data tracking and analysis system – LansingStat — to track all spending in real time and to find ways to produce better results at a lower cost,” said Bernero.

Which is saying the exact same thing with slightly different words. We’ve already passed major reforms in pension and health benefits for public employees and school employees, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. It’s highly unlikely that other reforms will save anything close to the money necessary to plug the anticipated $1.6 billion deficit in next year’s budget.

With all this empty rhetoric from both candidates, one can hardly be optimistic that either one will embrace any serious proposals for putting the state budget on a firm revenue foundation. And without that, the problem of systemic deficits is almost certainly going to continue.