Cutting bone – my thoughts on the State of the State…

Shall we?

Last night Missouri Governor Jay Nixon gave his State of the State address. Nixon bragged on the fact that the state workforce is the smallest it has been in 15 years, pledged to not raise taxes (pander much?), and then called for budget cuts across the board.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

If ever there was a case study for why states need to think twice, take a nap, and then think again before passing a balanced budget amendment…Lawd, give me strength…Missouri is that case.

Oh, catch that knee before you hurt someone.

I adore balanced budgets.

But I also understand that states aren’t households and there was far better ways to ensure fiscal discipline than passing a piece of legislation that gives government an easy out and mandates that the people suffer while true waste lingers unaddressed.

Pause…let that thought marinate…continue.

That’s right, I said that a balanced budget amendment is a government easy button.

Nixon and the gaggle of freaks that make up the majority in the Assembly get to cut…and cut…and then cut again.

Every year I watch this wretched circus and it never fails to remind me of a surgeon using Civil War battlefield medical techniques in a modern surgical theatre.

Oh, government will balance the budget…but they will do so without being challenged in to actual govern in a way that would make Missouri thrive rather than amputate and/or starve programs to death year after year.

Mmmhmm, we have a state government that is skilled in wielding the axe but lacks the intellectual capacity to diagnose what ails us.

And allow me to keep it real – the most vulnerable suffer from these cuts, our young people seeking education suffer…

…and ultimately Missouri suffers. Because while budget balancing legislators prepare to cut bone now that they’ve hacked away all the meat, we the people are looking at another year where our largest export is Missourians.

Blink.