Gov. Romney penned a piece in the Boston Globe yesterday about some basic concepts of fiscal responsibility that members of both parties in Congress would do well to remember:
Which brings us to today. When things are up, it's easy to forget the law of cycles, and to spend like ``up" is the only direction the economy will ever go. That's just what happened in this year's budget debate. On June 30, the Legislature passed a budget that spent not only all of the record tax revenues and all of the billion-dollar surplus, but also $500 million from the rainy day fund. The Legislature's bet must be that if the Massachusetts economy keeps booming next year, no one will be the wiser. But there may already be signs that this is a bad bet: Tax revenues are below forecast for each of the last two months. And the law of cycles will not go away. Sooner or later, a downturn is inevitable. The spending spree will lead to deep cuts, big borrowing, a call for higher taxes, or all of the above. The fingers of blame will be pointed in many directions, but spending-- runaway spending-- will be the real culprit.
Nationally we should have learned this lesson in 2001 when a mild recession wiped out the expected budget surpluses and have given us years of deficits that we're only now beginning to recover from.
'Tis good to see that Gov. Romney understands just how quickly seemingly sunny days can turn into a fiscal crunch.
Also, I'm looking through our posts for the last few days and we appear to have neglected this () long and interesting article from Bill Salmon from Monday. It asks the question about Romney "The Man to Beat?". Answer: Yep. Give it a read. There's more commentary on the The Mormon Issue™ than I'm interested in, but it's an overall good read.
~~~Thomas