Under the administration of Bev Perdue the only course available to reduce the NC state budget deficit is "to focus on supporting mission critical services and eliminating programs that have outlived their usefulness."
BusinessWeek
[Bev Perdue's] administration directed agencies this week to offer ways to cut spending by up to 15 percent in the fiscal year starting next July 1.
...
In a memo dated Thursday to departments and agencies, State Budget Director Charlie Perusse asked for options on how they would cut 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent from their offices.
"Across-the-board reductions have already been taken," Perusse wrote. "This budget cycle we need to focus on supporting mission critical services and eliminating programs that have outlived their usefulness."
Targeted cuts as a method of lowering spending is a false argument designed with failure as an objective. It has at its presupposition that some services are more important than others, but it fails as an argument due to the fact that that presupposition was already accounted for in the prior year's budget.
We can assume that a state budget once passed is essentially fair. If it were overly unfair in its distribution of state funds the budget would have failed. For the Perdue administration to later claim that some services are "mission critical" while others are not is to claim misallocation of the funds within the previous budget -- in this case, a budget Governor Perdue signed into law just two months ago.
If we were to reject Bev Perdue's claim that her budget misallocated state funds and instead side with the belief that the budget passed just two months ago fairly distributed those funds, we could proceed to cut the budget fairly through a 15% (Bev Perdue's desired percentage) cut in funding to all recipients of state funding. All the recipients of NC state dollars would share the pain equally based on a budget passed just two months ago that fairly distributed state funds.
Governor Bev Perdue's administration, though, prefers targeted cuts that would impact recipients of state funds unequally. The result of this would be the creation of haves and have-nots; those who bear the brunt of the cuts and those who do not. Those who bear the burden of the state budget cuts would rightfully respond to the unfairness poorly and attempt to eliminate the budget cuts. In all likelihood the budgets would be severely reduced or eliminated altogether in an effort to draft a fairer budget. The end result of Perdue's targeted budget cuts is continued deficits and continued NC dependence on conditional federal handouts.
The following year the same arguments will be made and once again few if any budget cuts will result furthering NC dependence on the federal state dole.
One has to wonder if Bev Perdue truly desires to reduce the NC budget with her imposition of haves and have-nots.
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