THE PROPOSED budget that Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) submitted to the D.C. Council is the largest in the city’s history. Its recommended increase in spending outpaces inflation at a time when many cities and states are moving in the opposite direction. So it’s been a little surreal to see the council’s deliberations over the budget framed by talk of hardship and draconian cuts; even more unsettling is an apparent push to add even more to the spending.
The council is set next week to adopt a budget for fiscal 2012, the contours of which are still being drafted by Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D). Judging by the council’s recent deliberations, there seems to be general agreement to add to — not subtract from — Mr. Gray’s $10.8 billion spending plan. According to The Post’s Mike DeBonis, support has emerged to add police officers, find more money for homeless services and maintain low-cost bus service. It’s also possible the council might try to reverse Mr. Gray’s proposed changes that would limit cash assistance to families and a program that provides interim disability payments. Mr. Brown has said he won’t go along with some of the mayor’s proposals to increase taxes, particularly a proposed new tax bracket for those earning more than $200,000.
It appears, then, that the council hopes to fund this new spending out of an expected increase in revenue. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi has indicated that an improving economy may lead him to increase significantly the city’s revenue projection. The Examiner’s Jonetta Rose Barras rightly called this type of budgeting “counting your chickens before they hatch.” Instead of taking a good hard look at spending, the council seems to want to take the easy way out.
Consider, for example, the debate over services for homeless people. Mr. Gray’s budget has been criticized as slashing funding for the homeless, with the result that families and children will be thrown onto the freezing streets. In fact, what happened is the city lost — as it knew it would — one-time federal stimulus dollars; Mr. Gray actually increased local funding for the homeless. Instead of asking whether it is realistic to expect local dollars to replace those one-time funds or to wonder what the city did two years ago in the absence of that money, the council’s impulse is just to spend. And if it has to raise taxes, no big deal.
We understand the need to maintain services and the government’s obligation to the less fortunate. Likewise, we are not philosophically opposed to increasing taxes, particularly when they (and here the gas and parking taxes come to mind) help to drive public policy. We hope, though, that that the council will be better disciplined than to think there is no end to what government can do and what its constituents can afford.
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