COLUMBUS, OHIO--What time is it? Ohio's biennial budget time. And what does that mean for all of us budget hawks, policy wonks, and pork haters? Today is the special day that happens only once every two years.
If you are fiscally prudent, if you love puppies and college football, if you have a place in your heart for America and her states, today is the day you have been waiting for: The Buckeye Institute has released its brand new updated-for-this-budget-cycle Piglet Book--ta da!
Ohio legislators, be advised, our report is chalk full of great ideas--and you can steal them gratis. We won't worry about copyright violations or whether you cite us as your source. Claim them as your own. Feel free to become the heroic spending slashers to put all former spending slashers to shame. We will cheer you on with every dollar removed from the budget. And best of all? You will sleep better and become morally richer knowing you did the right thing for the Buckeye state and its taxpayers. In fact, a colleague of yours, Ohio Senator Kris Jordan noted, "The Buckeye Institute's biennial Piglet Book is always a great resource for policymakers looking to cut back on unnecessary and often wasteful spending. I take its recommendations seriously and urge my colleagues to do the same."
Shucks, I don't think we could have said it better ourselves.
The Buckeye Institute's appropriately-named report analyzes wasteful spending in Ohio's biennial budget proposals, and cites projects that unwisely waste taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. Some of these projects should be eliminated entirely and others make sense to be left for private businesses and philanthropic organizations to fund instead.
A state's budget should reflect the priorities of its citizens. Too often, special interests alter the budget in harmful ways with crony handouts and questionable projects. The more a government spends, the more taxes it has to collect, which hurt small businesses and families most.
The goal of each edition of our Piglet Book is ultimately to limit state spending to essential services and state priorities, and--by way of a first step--to identify and expose the worst of the worst. If Ohio simply contained the growth of its spending to 2-2.5 percent annually, it could save over $3.7 billion. What would you do with that kind of cash? I think I'd literally go to Disney World. That's without cutting anything, just simply limiting the growth of spending. Imagine the savings from actually cutting some aspects of the budget. Of course, we still need to address the elephant in the room, what Governor Voinovich once called the "Pac-Man" of the state budget--Medicaid--if we want to get our house in order financially.
The author of the report, The Buckeye Institute's Senior Policy Analyst Greg R. Lawson said, "The Buckeye Institute's Piglet Book details specific spending programs that should be cut or eliminated in order to keep our state's budget under control. Too much government spending, even on well-meaning projects, reduces our prosperity and hurts taxpayers where it counts."
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