STATE SPENDING LIMITS: Trashing our future:
THE HOUSE BUDGET COMMITTEE approved a bill this month that is guaranteed to sink Missouri further into miserly mediocrity, while the rest of the country passes us by.
It would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the shortchanging of our public schools, the decline of our state universities and the neglect of the poor and sick, abused children and the mentally ill.
Over the long haul, it would undercut the state’s economy, kill jobs and make Missouri a poorer, meaner place to live. It might increase crime, too.
The committee approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit increases in state general spending to the rise in state population, plus the rise in consumer prices and medical inflation. It would require a vote of the people to spend more than a smidgen over that limit. The effect would be to freeze spending at about today’s shriveled levels.
I cannot begin to comment coherently upon this editorial. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch encourages unbridled growth the of state government apparatus and, undoubtedly, of the wealth transfer from everyone who is not dependent on government for basic luxuries to those who are (that is, the “needy” or “state employees”).
