West Virginia Governor-elect Patrick Morrisey promises to cut government. He said it repeatedly during the campaign and he emphasized it again earlier this month when he introduced his administration team.
“Everyone here reflects an important goal of the administration,” Morrisey said. “We want to make sure that the people coming on board are going to care about repurposing government and rightsizing government and I think every person in the cabinet and the governor’s office care deeply about this.”
Good luck with that.
Many of the conversations about cutting government begin with getting rid of the waste and fraud. That sounds good, and attempts to weed that out may be well-intentioned, but it is not that easy.
Government, by nature, is fiscally inefficient. Government spends other people’s money and there is no profit motive. Government agencies feel pressure to spend all the money they are allocated because if they save money, the budget makers might figure they need less in subsequent years.
The real cuts in government can be found in doing less and providing fewer services. That sounds simple enough, but it is extremely hard to accomplish. Conservative columnist George Will wrote recently about the challenge facing the new federal Department of Government Efficiency” to cut spending.
“Most things government does, it does because of a constituency—intense, articulate and well-lawyered—wants it done,” Will wrote. “Or because government wanted to create such a constituency that, in benefiting from it will demand its continuance, and expansion.”
In West Virginia, entrenched programs have constituency groups and political support. In addition, state spending often draws down a federal match, meaning the more state money that is allocated, the greater the federal dollars that flow into the state.
These and other factors frustrate would-be fiscal hawks. Typically, budget cutters just get worn down and settle on rearranging the deck chairs to create the impression of rightsizing government.
The easiest way to hold down state spending is to—wait for it—not spend as much. The Justice administration accomplished that by keeping projected annual tax collections artificially low. The state’s budget cannot exceed the estimates, so agencies had to live within their means. If there was money left over, the Legislature made supplemental appropriations to agencies and projects.
Oh, there is also additional spending on the horizon. Teachers, service workers and state employees will push for a pay raise and help with their health insurance premiums. The budget for the Hope Scholarship is set to explode to as much as $200 million annually as the families of as many as 40,000 private school students become eligible for the program.
Morrisey says he is ready for the challenge. “We need to have more accountability, more freedom and we need to save money that can then be invested back into the people.”
It is hard to argue with the philosophy; the challenge is the execution.