05 Apr The unbearable banality of provincial budget analysis

Is there anything in all of news and current affairs less edifying and more hypocritical than morning-after analysis of provincial budgets?

No matter who is in power, the response of the self-serving talking heads who pop up in the media is always the same:

• Shame! You decreased (or failed to sufficiently increase) funding for the industry or interest group I represent.
• Shame! You increased (or failed to sufficiently decrease) taxes on the taxpayer cohort I represent.

Erjavec

Spend more (on me)! Lower taxes (on me)! And don’t you dare run a deficit! The finger-waggers never acknowledge the tradeoffs required for a government of the day to indulge their pet priorities. They never say, “Cut them, so you can fatten me,” and, “My cause is more deserving than their cause, because…”

Thus, although the province cut the small business tax rate by half a percent to just three precent, Luc Erjavec, lobbyist for the Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association, slammed the government for, “a reduction in the small business tax threshold to $350,000, a 5.8 per cent increase in fees, and hidden income tax hikes through bracket creep,” before concluding, “There really is not a lot in here for small businesses.”

If Erjavec thinks his constituents are uniquely deserving among nearly 921,000 Nova Scotians, fine. Let him demand an slew of tax goodies targeted at them. But let him also propose that the government reverse its decision to fund insulin pumps and supplies for Nova Scotia children and teens with diabetes, and however many other worthwhile programs will be required to fund tax breaks for the tavern owners he represents. Anything less is self-serving twaddle.

Is it too much to ask newsroom managers responsible for covering budgets to find commentators who do not bring axes to the grinding wheel? To offer up people with knowledge of the budgeting process who can probe the reasonableness of budget estimates, and dispassionately assess the choices inherent in a budget?

Budgets are about choices. “We’re going to do this. We’re not going to do that. Here’s how much it will cost.”  You can agree with the choices or disagree with them, but it’s silly to pretend that funding one thing doesn’t mean unfunding another, or that programs can balloon while taxes plummet.

NB: This is not unique to NDP budgets. The same thing happened when the PCs were in power, and the Liberals before them. And the same thing will happen when one of those parties regains power, as one day they surely will.