Thursday, January 18, 2007

Conceding Too Many Points To The Left

Governor Fletcher spoke about budget priorities in Richmond on Tuesday, addressing the problem of 550,000 people "without health insurance," lowering college tuition, and spending more on social services and child care.

These are all black holes that taxpayer dollars will never provide enough support to fill. Think about it. Every new program to lower tuition costs leads to more wild inflation. And when are we going to try market-based solutions to expanding health coverage instead of slathering on more mandates and answering those with higher subsidies? And we still haven't figured out that spending more on social services and child care succeeds mainly in generating higher demand for more such "free" services.

The story concludes with most in the audience suggesting additional funds should go to the state retirement plans. This is good. Public employee pensions have to be taken care of first.

The focus on the wrong-headed stuff isn't something Governor Fletcher created and no one expects him to repair such entrenched sentiment. But until we get people off government solutions that we know only make things worse, we will have massive problems with trying to move forward as a state.