Balance The Budget

IS THE 2003 General Assembly prepared to make history? Maryland lawmakers have a long tradition of getting their work done on time and going home. Only once since 1917, when the state constitution was amended to include a balanced-budget provision, has the Assembly failed to pass a spending plan during its 90-day session. The year was 1992, and William Donald Schaefer was governor, R. Clayton Mitchell Jr. was House speaker and, yes, Thomas V. Mike Miller was president of the Senate. State tax revenues had dropped from one year to the next.

Having watched Dr. Ben Carson's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on YouTube, I can accept his foray into politics because he has worked with people of all religions, and his scholarship fund has supported talented students regardless of race or religion ("Remarks vault Carson into the political arena," Feb. 18). Dr. Carson is a good man. Yet I am flummoxed by his railings against political correctness. Now that he is retiring, he is free to sound off, but I am sure that at Hopkins he practiced political correctness as assiduously as anyone, else he could not have survived there.

Saddam is acting up again, so George won't have to balance the budget for another year.

The first 45 days of the General Assembly session were dominated by talk of marriage. The theme for the second half is shaping up to be money - and there's not enough of it. Thursday's Senate vote approving same-sex marriage in Maryland came on the eve of the halfway point of the annual 90-day session. Now legislators are turning their attention to the budget, and how exactly they will close a projected $1 billion deficit. "It feels like we are starting a second session," said Del. Guy Guzzone, a Howard County Democrat.

An article in yesterday's editions incorrectly indicated that the House and Senate had approved identical versions of the Republicans' bill to balance the budget. In fact, the Senate made minor changes to the House version before passing it. As a result, the House must now approve the Senate's version for the bill to be passed by Congress.The Sun regrets the errors.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer announced $450 million in cuts in state spending today to balance the budget for 1992. The cuts will include laying off state workers, slashing aid to counties and cutting assistance for poor people.The Evening Sun wants to know if you think the state should raise taxes to balance the budget instead of making the cuts.Call SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information system, on a Touch-Tone phone. The call is local, and answers will be registered between 10 a.m. and midnight.

WASHINGTON -- With bipartisan support in both chambers, Congress approved far-reaching measures yesterday to curb spending for Medicare and other popular but costly benefit programs.As part of a plan to balance the federal budget for the first time since 1969, the separate but similar bills would trim $140 billion over the next five years.It will take months more, though, to reconcile differences between the two measures and win President Clinton's approval.'Berlin Wall' falls"We are going to balance the budget by 2002.

Wise move. A club with no players doesn't need a manager.Real fans don't want to see an 18 1/2 -hour, sensitive, socially significant documentary. They want to see a ball game.The election that was to have been about who didn't balance the budget will be about who killed health care reform.The real Peter Angelos just stood up.

By a margin of slightly more than 6 percentage points, callers to SUNDIAL say the state should not raise taxes to balance the budget. Of 1,219 callers yesterday, 650, or 53 percent, were against raising taxes for that purpose. And 569 (46 percent) said the state should raise taxes to balance the budget.Today and tonight, The Evening Sun wants to know more about how you feel about the state budget problems and the economy overall.Call SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information system, on a Touch-Tone phone.

The General Assembly convenes today in Annapolis to begin its 1992 session with the chairman of the Budget and Taxation Committee, Sen. Laurence Levitan, D-Montgomery, calling for an increase in taxes to help the state balance the budget.Levitan's proposal specifically calls for increases in the sales tax, income tax and a nickel-a-gallon increase in the gasoline tax.The Evening Sun wants to know if you would support an increase in any of these taxes to help solve the budget crisis.Call SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information system, on a Touch-Tone phone.

Gov. Martin O'Malley acknowledged the obvious on Saturday when he told local officials at the annual Maryland Association of Counties summer conference that tax increases may be a part of the solution to the state's projected $1 billion budget shortfall next year. Tax revenues are picking up, but not fast enough to make up for the effects of the recession, and the likelihood of federal budget cuts could make the state's fiscal problems worse. We have reached the point at which some additional revenues may be necessary to protect the public infrastructure and services on which our collective prosperity is based.

Congress' recent efforts to balance the federal budget give new meaning to "women and children first. " The $500 million cut to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) that President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to as part of last month's budget deal pushes the nation's fiscal concerns onto the shoulders of babies. Because WIC actually reduces health care costs, it is not clear why it has been targeted for cuts. Economic analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

A Republican proposal for another two-week extension of the federal budget, floated on Friday, at least delays the prospect of a government shutdown. But it does nothing to resolve the underlying stalemate between President Barack Obama and House Republicans over their effort to cut $61 billion from the current year's budget. What makes matters worse is that even if the Republicans succeed in enacting all those cuts, it won't come close to eliminating the budget deficit, which for fiscal 2011 is estimated at $1.5 trillion.

It didn't take long for certain State House tongues — not all of them Democratic — to start wagging after Del. Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio's official Republican response to Gov. Martin O'Malley's State of the State address last week. The charge was hypocrisy in the first degree, and the critics believed they caught the Eastern Shore delegate in a classic "do what I say, not what I do" moment. In her speech, Delegate Haddaway-Riccio suggested that with the state facing a projected $1.6 billion deficit, lawmakers should forgo the General Assembly's version of earmarks, the $15 million in local bond bills included in the capital budget each year.

To listen to Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch, the state is starving. "You're down to bone and gristle now when it comes to state government," the Democrat recently said in response to the $454 million cut from the current budget last month by the Board of Public Works. The state has burned $736 million worth of flab from the $14 billion 2010 operating budget in the past two months. But the trims do not imperil big government in Maryland. And they resemble a series of bulimic purges more than any systemic dietary changes - meaning more rounds of cuts will be necessary to balance the budget in coming years.

Wrong time to spend millions to save land Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to spend $72 million to acquire 9,200 acres along the Potomac River and on the Eastern Shore ("State plans to preserve 9,200 acres," Dec. 4). These acquisitions apparently would be funded by the state's land preservation fund and federal monies. The state currently faces about a $200 million budget shortfall, which will likely escalate to close to $1 billion in the months ahead as a result of sharply declining revenues from sales taxes, income taxes, capital gains taxes and the like.

Before U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest got a chance to play the piano and sing at his town meeting in Annapolis Wednesday night, he explained to more than 70 constituents his positions on Medicare reform, capital gains tax reductions and abortion.For more than an hour, Gilchrest talked and took questions from the audience at the Maryland Hall for the Performing Arts.Gilchrest told listeners they should be optimistic about Congress' ability to balance the budget by 2002 and reform Medicare, welfare and Social Security.

Few would want slots near home Marylanders can expect a deluge of out-of -state money from gaming corporations that support the slots amendment to the Maryland Constitution ("Wealth driving 'No' vote on slots," July 20). Citizens need to ask themselves if these private corporations give a lick about public order, good government and the state's future, then vote accordingly in November. I think Frederick W. Puddester's attempt to hold the state budget hostage to passage of the slots referendum is disingenuous and unscrupulous.