An Entirely Self-Created "Emergency"

JUNE 16, 2010 E-MAIL THIS PRINTER FRIENDLY

Perhaps because Governor Martin O'Malley wasn't raised on the Eastern Shore, a place known for its chicken farms, he may not be too familiar with the saying "don't count your chickens before they hatch." But for most of us, whether we live on the Eastern Shore or not, this is just common sense: you want to wait and make sure that anything promised to you actually materializes before depending on it in some way. This concept seems foreign not only to the governor, though, but also to many in Annapolis.

The flaws of the governor's thinking are becoming evident now that it looks like Congress isn't going to give the state additional federal Medicaid money. That would be no big deal, except Governor O'Malley and the General Assembly used this nonexistent money to balance the state's budget. These policymakers balanced the budget using money that wasn't even promised to the state and now the state is facing some bad choices in case their fiscal house of cards collapses.

Not surprisingly, the enthusiasm for fiscal shenanigans has infected not only Governor O'Malley and the General Assembly but also those who make their living off government spending. In Sunday's Baltimore Sun, Joseph DeMattos, speaking on behalf of a special interest group, wrote an op-ed saying that if Congress did not appropriate money for Maryland's Medicaid program it would be a disaster. The headline of his article calls the situation an emergency.

If so, this is an emergency created by Governor O'Malley's poor budgeting and our legislators' acquiescence to his budget tricks. When the budget was being considered by the General Assembly, some of us spoke up about these issues. Our voices were ignored. Now it's an "emergency" that the state needs these funds. Well, it wouldn't have been an emergency if our legislators had refused to go along with the governor's sham budget.

Perhaps the biggest laugh in Mr. DeMattos's article is his assertion that "Gov. Martin O'Malley ... has effectively navigated a sea of red ink..." Really? He's relied on a huge amount of federal government spending to balance the budget, even going so far as to count on unappropriated federal Medicaid funding to declare the budget was in balance. That's not effective leadership; that's being lucky to be a governor at the same time that the federal government is willing to continue bailing out states that are spending too much.

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An Entirely Self-Created "Emergency"

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