During college, I drove a 1973 Vega station wagon
back and forth from the University of Wyoming home
to our ranch on East Pass Creek. The Vega was
horribly uncomfortable and since President Carter
had recently imposed a 55 MPH federal speed limit,
the trek home stretched into a long, boring, six
hours. My racing striped wagon was also a gas hog
with an exceptionally small gas tank, so I needed to
find a gas station every 150 miles—preferably, one
which actually had fuel. (For you readers under the
age of 45, gasoline supplies were highly unreliable
during the Carter years.)
The only bright spot of my journey home was the
half-way point fuel stop in Casper had one of the
only McDonalds in Wyoming. Within minutes, I filled
my tank and balanced a bag holding two Big Macs, a
large order of fries, and a medium root beer in the
passenger seat. Since I was 18 years old and hungry
most of the time, I inhaled all nourishment out of
the McDonalds sack before I topped the hill north of
Casper and this brings me to the magical sack part.
For the next three boring hours, I probed my fingers
through the hamburger wrappings and napkins
searching for the last french fry. Just when the
sack appeared empty, a single fry would poke its
nose from under the seam in the bottom of the bag
and I would ravage it. To this starving teenager, it
was a miracle and this brings me to my point.
The Legislative Fiscal Division is projecting
Montana could have a 426 million dollar ending fund
balance by 2013. I am not sure it is even
grammatically correct, but in a single sentence big
government advocates are conveying the image this
news demonstrates both their superior stewardship
with the Montana checkbook, while exposing
conservatives as evil because they failed to spend
all the tax money collected. (There is an oxymoron
in there somewhere.) Let us take off our rose
colored glasses for a clearer view of our financial
picture. Consider these facts:
1) One-half of Montana’s budget comes from the
federal government; an entity currently borrowing 40
percent of every dollar they gift us. Therefore, it
is the 51 percent of Americans (and Montanans) who
actually pay income taxes who will ultimately foot
the bill for this “free federal money.”
2) Montana’s 426 million dollar cushion ignores
unfunded state pension liabilities which has passed
3 billion dollars and is climbing. Attention people
in the private sector: Is your pension guaranteed
because you are guaranteeing pensions in the public
sector.
3) This 426 million is a projection; it is not money
in the bank.
In the real world, our financial sack is empty. We
can dig under the wrappers and check every seam, but
there is no hidden french fry which will solve our
economic woes. We do not have a revenue problem, we
have a spending problem. It is time for a
fundamental change of government back to the form
and size defined by our founders in the
Constitution.
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