Utah Wants Too Much

Utah’s debt monster is after us, like a green globby thing chasing us in our dreams. He wants $3.5 billion. That’s a lot of money.

What happened? Senate Budget Chairman Lyle Hillyard got it right in a Daily Herald article of May 27, ”... we haven’t been able to control ourselves ...”. Interesting. State governments can get out of control, just like the federal government? Who would have thought... Conservatives fume over bloated federal government, as they should -- somebody has to. Those same rants should be aimed at an out-of-control state. Our budget stats have earned us a verbal lashing.
Where is our self-control? It appears our state servants at the Capitol fund what the state shouldn’t fund -- all those things the free market should preside over. They ignored the flashing “stop the spending” light on our fiscal fire alarm. By any account, we got ourselves into this mess.
Apparently the problem lies with our math -- addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, the skills all elementary students learned until recently. (Now, under Common Core, the right answer doesn’t matter, so long as you felt happy while getting it.) New Math was the rage, and Utah bought in.
Addition came first. Utah’s government added powers and duties to its chore chart as it embraced control. According to libertasutah.org, we now have ten million words in our state code and 10,403 crimes you can be charged with. That’s nuts! You could commit three felonies a day and never know it. The costs add up for bureaucrats, office space and enforcement. (Does this sound like the federal government?) We’ve also been “yes men” for federal perks, payoffs and programs, some with bite-back costs at the end. We receive 45.3% of state revenues from federal sources -- more than New York or California. Addition has been huge.
Subtraction came next. All those additions of state power subtracted our earned income. Regulations dinged it further, as every law takes money to enforce. For instance, are you OK with the $1.74 million in bonuses awarded to officials of our empty UTA buses? As government got complicated, Average Joe subtracted his attention, and multiplication settled into the void.
Multiplication has been titanic. With the addition of power and the subtraction of respect for your paycheck, the need for money multiplied. That’s where the $3.5 billion debt comes in. Even in good times we wanted too much, promised too much and borrowed. Then times got hard. (Doesn’t everyone over 10 know that hard times follow good, so we spend, and save, accordingly?) Ursula Wayman of Utah County got it right as she described her youth in Switzerland, where people avoided debt and saved for unexpected events. Utah should take that as wise counsel. Self-control could have stayed the debtor’s hand. Our interest -- the rental fee for greenbacks -- has multiplied to half a billion dollars annually to cover our excess. Should we be excited that debt payments should begin to wane in five years? Hardly. The pain multiplies over time.
Division offers hope for government math. Legislators, please divide the necessary and legitimate — infrastructure repairs and law enforcement -- from the needless and negative, like a million dollars for the Sundance Film Festival (let those who attend fund it) and a half million for Envision Utah, the UN’s ugly Agenda 21 program to take away our private property.
Our elected officials know better. Back up! Get your head on straight, rethink your function (hint: protect, not plunder). Don’t divide our prosperity between the necessary and the needless. Let’s draft our own math: Add elected officials who won’t give away the store, subtract out of the equation what’s not government’s to give and multiply our eyes and ears to supervise state spending. Then we can divide greater prosperity among Utahns.
We make math choices in the voting booth. Ask candidates what they plan to add and multiply, and what they can subtract and divide. Vote accordingly. Our state government need not function like a mathematical dunce.

Get it Right: Whining to the Feds

America is racing toward bankruptcy, with debts beyond any ability to repay. The debt clock stands near 17 trillion, with future combined federal liabilities (social security, prescriptions drugs, Medicare, ect.) at 126 trillion, an incomprehensible sum. Yet we still beg for federal funds. Why? The government has no money. To feed its gluttony, it borrows every cent it gives and vastly more. Why do we add to it, boarding a rapidly sinking ship, only to sink it further?

Conservatives routinely bewail the entitlement mentality. Lest we forget, cities, counties and states can embrace entitlement as well. Under our Constitution, the federal government has only 26 responsibilities: twenty for Congress and six to the president. Funding non-federal projects, such as Alpine's $750,000 flood mitigation project, is not among the 26 duties, yet that request graces the desk of federal bureaucrats.
It's not that the project is not necessary or good; it's just not a federal matter, and making it so embraces entitlement. If the project is necessary, it should be locally funded with citizen support, strong priorities, and a paring knife aimed at current expenditures.
America, under our original Constitution, became great through independence. As a basic system, anything non-essential fell to private enterprise. Anything essential for the community was funded there; ditto for the county, double ditto for the state. Each state was an independent laboratory; a sovereign body with the duty to care for its own. Beyond what all states needed, such as a national navy, unified postal system, uniform bankruptcy laws and patents, a universal monetary system, the states were the boss. There was no whining to the feds.
Things have changed! Now we "run home to papa" -- the federal government. But papa is broke; he has no money. His life savings are gone, he's in hock to the bank for a whole lot more than he owns and the banks have threatened to shut him down. Yet we still run to papa for funds. As an example, students go to him for loans -- almost half, 45 percent, of Utah graduates owe the Feds over $17,000 at graduation, with $1 trillion owed nationally. Their grandparents bought houses for that amount two generations ago. It is not one of the 26 federal duties to loan money to students. In a tight job market, can they repay, or will we excuse the debts as a down payment into Entitlement Villa?
How about if we leave Papa and support ourselves? Personal responsibility is the basis of a constitutional republic. Without it; with papa paying the bills, we cannot be a constitutional republic; we must be a socialist nation, where people, businesses, and governments need nursery care. The more money we take from the feds, the more they can dictate to us. You pay your bills, you make the decisions; someone else pays, he tells you what to do. Freedom versus control; it's a simple equation. Entitlement saps our strength, convinces us that we are helpless, and we become slaves. With our subscription to civic entitlement, we reap a culture of slavery.

Do we want freedom, or do we not? This is not a cake-and-eat-it-too deal, either we care for ourselves, or we let the federal government do it. Which? If freedom is our goal, personal and civic responsibility bid us abandon our place in line at the federal feeding trough, even for pet projects.
Probably all of us have partaken of the entitlement feast, though perhaps not knowingly or willingly. It has become a way of life, but it exacts an indelible toll. Federal money is habit forming. Like street drugs, it sucks your resolve, crushes your future, and makes you dependent.
What do we want? It's our decision: freedom, with its responsibility and self-sacrifice, or ever-growing social and economic slavery? We should actively make the decision, however, not continue to bellyache about entitlement while we practice it. Hypocrisy is not good for the soul.