Mills budget is reckless orgy of spending

Let’s say that this was a good year at work. Let’s say that the company you work for is so pleased with you that they give you a small raise, and say that next year, if everything goes equally well, they’ll give you a bonus reward.

What do you think you’d do? Would you plan out your yearly budget to spend every penny of what you hope will be paid to you this year? Or would you be a bit more financially cautious, and plan for your income to be less, and insulate yourself from the possibility that the bonus might not ever materialize?

Most rational people would choose the more careful option.

So then why, if that is the case for virtually all of us in our personal lives, would we accept anything different in government?

Gov. Janet Mills has proposed a gargantuan two-year budget that seeks to spend a whopping $8.041 billion, which represents an eye popping increase of 11.4 percent over the last enacted budget.

This budget uses a very optimistic forecast for future economic growth and the resulting growth in revenues — the metaphorical bonus, if you follow — to establish a baseline, and then proposes to spend virtually every penny of the hoped-for money.

Just for context, Gov. Paul LePage’s last proposed budget — just two years ago — was a modest (by comparison) $6.8 billion. In the end, the Legislature, in a rather disgusting display of favor trading and political buy-offs, passed a $7.1 billion biennial budget.

So Mills’ $8 billion budget represents an incredible growth in one biennium. Unsustainable doesn’t even begin to cover it.

In 2013, LePage proposed a $6.2 billion budget, which would have been a more than $100 million increase over the $6.1 billion state budget passed in 2011. The Legislature, of course, began the horse trading and decided to spend money on their own pet projects, and the budget inflated to roughly $6.3 billion. LePage vetoed it, calling it wasteful, and full of special interest giveaways. The Legislature overrode his veto.

So what were we left with? A budget that had a lot of political pork used for favor trading, and now a new baseline of $6.3 billion to be used for the next budget.

So in 2015, LePage proposed a budget that spent more than $6.5 billion, which was roughly $166 million more than its predecessor.

Once again, the Legislature got its fingers in the dough. Again, they added even more fluff, and passed a $6.7 billion behemoth. Again, LePage vetoed the budget, calling it wasteful. Again, the veto was overridden.

Now fluff on top of fluff, and a new bloated, wasteful baseline of $6.7 billion.

That baseline was used by LePage to build the next budget which, once again, contained spending increases. This time, his proposal was for $6.8 billion. Then the Legislature got ahold of it, and more spending was added.

In the end, the bloat built upon bloat was such that House Republicans rebelled, shutting down state government to demand fiscal restraint. The “restraint” that ended up ending the shutdown resulted in a $7.1 billion budget.

So now we have three successive budgets that each contain hundreds of millions of dollars in extra spending above what the governor had proposed, each providing the building blocks for future growth.

And now, Mills decides to double down on all that spending excess, and hypercharge it to the tune of more than $800 million in new spending, putting us over $8 billion.

If you ever wonder how New Hampshire, Florida and other states can get away with having no income tax, or how other states make themselves more economically competitive while we sit still, look no further than this stunning fiscal irresponsibility and how often it has been repeated over decades.

That’s your answer.

Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.