Monday, June 30, 2008

Tightening our belts like drunken sailors

The favored buzzphrase in Frankfort this year has been about "tightening our belts" with a tough budget situation.

An LRC source gave me the following information in exchange for a promise that his/her identity would not be divulged (seriously!). It's the official authorized bonding limit for the 2009-10 budget years.

You won't believe it.

We will add $1,508,494,000 to the state's credit card in our belt-tightening biennium. That's one and a half billion dollars, for the math-challenged. With interest payments, you can double that to $3 billion.

Thank your grandchildren.

And we already have the 3rd highest debt-to-GDP ratio of all states in the nation. Thank goodness for Massachusetts and New York!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The time has come for some courageous legislator to present Ross Perot type charts to reduce the administration and legislative spin to simple common sense points so taxpayers get the real message.

Anonymous said...

If I calculated correctly, that means the state is adding about $400 of debt per person. Ouch!

Anonymous said...

[citation needed]

David Adams said...

Citation? For what?

Anonymous said...

"We already have the 3rd highest debt-to-GDP ratio of all states in the nation. Thank goodness for Massachusetts and New York!" [citation needed]

David Adams said...

hit the link...

Anonymous said...

No offense intended here, but try linking to the research that supports the claim you are making, especially when you are parroting a claim originally made in that research. A direct HTML link makes you appear more credible and does your readers a service.

Why leave your readers to cut and paste text if they want to check your claims or read more about the subject?

David Adams said...

No cutting and pasting is necessary. The report you are looking for hasn't been written yet.