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Essential Government Functions

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

Now that the Kentucky legislature has adjourned without passing a budget and without passing an income tax reduction, it appears that Governor Fletcher will have authority only to fund “essential government functions”.  So what is an “essential government function”?  Every dollar the government spends is first taken away from individuals by force through taxation. It is not money that is given voluntarily or out of the kindness of people’s hearts.  Instead, it is paid out of fear of being shot or imprisoned if we don’t pay it.  Thus, especially without having the mandate of a budget passed by the legislature, the Governor should feel constrained to restrict state spending to only the barest of essentials.    

The business of politicians jockeying for power to decide what they will force us to support has gotten completely out of hand.  When the Governor tried to make a reasonable cut in the Governor’s Scholars program, The C-J and the Democrat legislators acted as if the world was coming to an end, and then the Governor backed down.  After all, it was only a matter of $300,000.  Of course, there is no end to the number of “good projects” that could be funded, but the way to decide what gets funded should not be with the political circus we have in Frankfort each year.  It’s time for us to stop trying to mooch off of each other and to start paying our own way for the things we want.  Would we rather have cell phones for each family member or health insurance?  Would we rather take a nice vacation or pay for a good education, work outside the home, or home school?  Each of us should be free to set our own priorities for our own families.  If that ever happened, we all would be far better off than we are today. 

As a way to move in that direction, I would like to see a new law passed that says, if the legislative session ends without the legislature passing a budget, then the Governor will be authorized to spend only the lowest amount of money for each budget item that had been proposed during the legislative session.  In other words, if one party proposed spending $20 million on new building construction of its favorite projects, and the other party proposed spending $10 million on new building construction of its favorite projects, and the two sides could not agree on a budget, then the Governor would only have the authority to spend the $10 million on the lower-spending party’s project. Maybe this would encourage the politicians to reduce their spending demands.  Surely, it couldn’t make matters any worse than they are now!

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