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Humason Claims Democrats Responsible for Bloated Budget, Reality Tells a Different Story

May 5th, 2008 | posted by Steve Dondley
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Recently, State Representative Humason started sending emails to constituents. I applaud him for it. Communicating with voters is a good thing, not to mention good politics. I'm sure the communication effort will help him at the polls. I've sure got nothing against a politician hustling for votes.

However, I do take exception if a politician uses misleading information in order to win votes. Humason appears to do just that in his last email where he bemoans the increase in the state budget since 1991 from just over $13 billion to almost $28 billion today and blames Democrats.

But are Democrats who "love to spend other peoples' money" really to blame as he claims? What crucial information did Humason neglect to mention? I challenged Representative Humason on these numbers in an email response to him. Here's what I wrote:

Representative Humason,

You leave out some important facts that would account for the large increase in the state budget since 1991.

First, factor in inflation since 1991, and your 13 billion dollar figure is actually about 20.3 billion dollars in today's dollars. See the BLS inflation calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Healtch care costs in 1991 were about 18%, or about 2.3 billion, of the budget. Health care is now over 8.5 billion dollars. So that accounts for another 6.2 billion dollars, bringing us to 26.6 billion dollars. Just factoring in inflation and health care, the budget has actually increased only by about 5%. Pretty reasonable if you ask me. And I'm sure this remaining 5% could probably easily accounted for with pensions and other reasonable increases in the cost of running a government since 1991.

So, in the future, I'd appreciate it you painted a more complete, nuanced picture of the state budget. That's your responsibility as our State Representative. I know you like to cast yourself as a watchdog on those Democrats, always ready to grab the taxpayer's wallet. I understand that plays well with the voters. But it really does a disservice to citizens who need a deeper understanding of the crisis the budget faces.

Thanks,
Steve Dondley

I want to add that the health care figures I came up with were derived from a recent report from an excellent report put out a few months ago, Point of Reckoning: Two Decades of State Budget Trends put out by MassINC. My numbers are probably off by a billion or two, I don't claim to be a budget analyst, I'm a webiste developer.

But before we get lost in numbers, the more important point is: why isn't Humason jumping up and down about the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, skyrocketing health care costs? Why does he conveniently not factor inflation into his figures? It's certainly not because inflation has been negligible. Call me cynical, but my theory is that it's a lot easier for him to gain votes by relying on one of the oldest Republican plays in the book, promising pennies from heaven to a cash strapped middle class. If I'm right, that's a shame because what we need these days is less pandering and more leadership.

So far, I haven't heard back from the Representative. I'll let you know when I do.