Check the Numbers

This is a mantra that should be repeated at all levels of government.

The New York State legislative leaders and Governor David Paterson say that they've fixed the MTA's budget problems, which includes raising payroll taxes, hiking fares, fees on vehicle registrations, and imposing surcharges on taxi usage.

The numbers don't add up, especially if the rosy projections do not come to pass. That means that even with the expectation of further fare increases, the MTA will be running structural deficits for years to come.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli must examine the deal and see whether it's all just smoke and mirrors.

Meanwhile, President Obama is supposedly going to cut $17 billion from his just announced budget. How exactly is that a fiscally responsible thing to do? He proposed a multi-trillion dollar spending package that was all deficit spending and back-loaded so that the public might possibly see construction just before his reelection campaign gets underway, but which was larded with tons of pork to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. His latest fiscal year spending package is $3.4 trillion, far in excess of anything ever proposed by the US government, and he's calling for $17 billion in cuts?

President Obama has said for weeks that his staff is scouring the federal budget, "line by line," for savings. Today, they will release the results: a plan to trim 121 programs by $17 billion, a tiny fraction of next year's $3.4 trillion budget.

The plan is less ambitious than the hit list former president George W. Bush produced last year, targeting 151 programs for $34 billion in savings. And like most of the cuts Bush sought, congressional sources and independent budget analysts yesterday predicted that Obama's, too, would be a tough sell.

"Even if you got all of those things, it would be saving pennies, not dollars. And you're not going to begin to get all of them," said Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist who waged her own battles with Congress as a senior official in the Clinton White House budget office. "This is a good government exercise without much prospect of putting a significant dent in spending."

It's a fraction of a percentage, and even worse, it's half of what President Bush called for in cuts during Bush's last year in office. Proportionally, it makes Obama's budget cuts look even more paltry.

There is no one in politics that appears to be willing to be the taxpayers' advocates and protect taxpayers from profligate spending and irresponsible budget proposals that do nothing to impose fiscal responsibility on anyone at any level of government.

It has to start somewhere, and in New York, that means the comptrollers offices at the state and local level. They must stand up and demand accountability and audit the books of all the relevant parties to insure that the taxpayers aren't being taken for a ride. It's their obligation and fiduciary responsibility to do so.

UPDATE:
DrewM at Ace points out that most of the $17 billion comes from one area of the budget, national defense. It's specifically relating to the Defense Department cessation of the F-22 project and choosing not to update/replace the Presidential helicopter fleet. Also, much of the rest of the cuts will be restored by Congress, which does this stuff as a matter of policy.

Instead of focusing on the dollar value of his bloated budget, he's touting the number of programs supposedly touched by his cuts. It's smoke and mirrors, much in the same way that the Administration now classifies successfully defeating the recession and unemployment figures by the nonsensical "created or saved jobs".