Downsizing Government

The Budget: Using Creativity to Downsize the State Bureaucracy?
The state budget passed. I voted no as did most of the GOP in the senate. While the house Republicans did yeoman’s work, the tough decisions just didn’t go far enough.

The reasons are simple: the “cuts”, no matter how the other side has tried to characterize them, do not go deep enough. The result is this: we are simply moving the edge of the cliff back a few feet. The smart bet is that state revenues will continue to decline. If this is the case, next spring we will be back, passing bills to cut spending just to get out of the current budget year. We could be wisely preparing for this eventuality, but sadly, we are not.

The thinking among the Democrats is that the government should be spending more on social programs. No one doubts that social programs get hit hardest in times like these.

What many of us do doubt is that the state’s bureaucracy is unable to create 5% or 3% or even 2% worth of efficiencies in their operations. For example, by one estimate, finding across the board efficiencies of just 3% (except to K-12) would have equated to about $200,000,000 dollars.

Necessity ought to be allowed to be the mother of invention. And it is here, but it’s wildly misdirected.

Legislators should have come together to simply force the bureaucratic creativity needed to extend beyond the budget gimmicks in this year’s budget. New thinking ought to be used to create ways to do the same with 95% or 97% or 98% as can be done with 100%. I’m not buying that it can’t be done. I don’t think most people who are finding creative ways to adjust to this economy are buying it either. It can be done. Where there is a will, there is a way. But the short supply of will to even modestly downsize the state bureaucracy is fairly concentrated among the current members of the minority party.

In-State Tuition for Veterans – one step closer

HB 1039 (McNulty/Kopp) directs the colleges and universities in the state of Colorado to allow honorably discharged veterans who live in Colorado for any length of time to receive in-state tuition status. It is headed to Senate Appropriations committee Tuesday.

Incentives for volunteer firefighters bill passed

My SB 21 passed out of the senate this week. The full story is here.

E-Prescription bill advances

My bill taking the state one step closer to realizing one of the key health care transformations promoted by Newt Gingrich advanced out of the senate Health and Human Services committee. It directs the Department of Health Care Policy and Finance to analyze whether and how to implement an e-Rx system for Medicaid users. I am hoping to get an amendment added to the bill (which I am sponsoring along with along with Sen. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood) that directs the Department to move this direction and report results. It is efficient, actually enhances patient safety, saves a lot of money, and secure. For more on the story, click here. For a great white paper click here.


Next week
My bill (Nikkel/Kopp) directing the state to create a budget transparency website will be heard in committee. More on that next week.

Also, I am the sponsor of SJM 8, which asks Congress to not implement a Cap and Trade system nationally as it will cost consumers an unthinkable amount of money. The Heritage Foundation’s analysis, for example, has revealed that a dramatically more modest version of the legislation now being discussed, would have cost 400,000 to 800,000 jobs per year. The EPA estimated that between 1.2 million and 2.3 million jobs will be lost by 2050 as a result. GDP will also take a major hit. It’s little wonder. Electricity prices, for example, would increase from 96% to 133%. Closer to home, the National Association of Manufacturers estimates a loss of between 20,000 and 31,252 jobs will be lost by 2020. And remember, this analysis comes from the Warner-Lieberman bill of 2008. It mandated a carbon reduction of 25% below 1990 levels. The bill now being discussed, Markey-Waxman, mandates an 80% reduction of 1990 levels.

SJM 8 was sent to the senate’s kill committee, so it will debated there, and not the floor of the whole senate, where everyone would have a chance to weigh in and vote.