Numbers? We’ll get around to it

Whether you accepted a target date of April 1 or April 2, majority Democrats in Carson City vowed that by the end of last week we'd have some firm numbers, telling us how much they plan to spend in their 2009-2010 Nevada state budget, and by how much they propose to jack up taxes to raise all the added loot they seek.

Well, Thursday came and went. The legislative leaders held a press conference. And we still don't have any specifics as to how much they plan to spend, or what taxes they propose to create or hike -- assuming they can pass such hikes over a threatened veto by Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Gov. Gibbons has proposed a two-year budget of $6.17 billion, which would require teachers and state employees to sustain 6 percent salary cuts, along with health care benefit reductions.

To avoid the pay cuts, the Legislature would have to locate and enact nearly a $1 billion tax increase -- larger than the record $833 million tax increase enacted in 2003 after the state Supreme Court's despicable instruction that the Legislature should ignore the supermajority requirement for tax hikes.

"We need to complete work on the budget before we know what the essential number is," said Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, on Thursday.

The bottom line, as the accountants have taught us to say, is that -- despite the fact both population growth and school enrollments have leveled off -- even the "maintain services at current levels" spending Carson City Democrats apparently consider "as low as they'll go" represents 17 percent more spending than the budget enacted by the Legislature two years ago -- 26 percent more than actual spending of about $6.3 billion.

For months, the bureaucrats and Democratic legislators have been making a show of tearing their hair, weeping and moaning about "cuts," lambasting Gov. Gibbons for submitting a budget that will supposedly leave schools and hospitals no choice but to close their doors, leave children and old people to starve in the streets, etc.

What cuts? Where are the cuts? Most Nevada taxpayers are figuring out how to tighten their belts and live on less. But a 17 percent spending increase -- a revenue increase of 37 percent over what's now flowing in to state coffers, new or increased taxes to generate an extra $2.16 billion, to a new record income level of $7.96 billion -- is the minimum lawmakers will consider?

They plan to enact spending measures to raise and allocate at least that much extra loot, yet they still won't say what taxes they plan to raise in order to increase state revenues by 37 percent?

"They are putting hundreds of millions back into the governor's budget," explains Daniel Burns, communications director for Gov. Gibbons, "and their budget will bankrupt the state. We are supposed to be working on stimulating the economy now, and new taxes would kill it."

It now appears lawmakers will wait till the state Economic Forum meets on May 1, hoping against hope the Forum will increase the current estimate of how much the state will have available to spend between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2011.

Will they then agree to spend only as much as the Forum predicts current taxes and fees will produce?

Or will they, instead, wait till nightfall on the final day of the session, push through a bunch of ill-considered, ill-debated tax hikes at the last minute, at which point they will quickly adjourn and rush home?

And they call it "leadership."