Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Ohio Poll Shows 46% of Ohioans Fear American Dream May Fail Next Generation

by John Michael Spinelli

May 11, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: With fewer than 50 days left for a split General Assembly and Governor to hammer out a budget they can both agree on, the news last week that figures for the current fiscal year could be as much as $900 million more out of whack due to plummeting tax hauls was tantamount to pouring more salt into an already gaping wound.

Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, the first of his political ilk to hold that office since Republicans dominated it starting in the early 1990s, has had to trim state spending three times to the tune of about $2 billion in his first three years, due to an economy that was already failing fast when he won the office in 2006, and is falling further and faster with little expectations for recovery anytime soon. The Ohio Constitution requires a two-year balanced budget effective July 1st.

Strickland has stuck to his story that Ohio's woes are the result of a national economy gone sour, due in large measure to reckless management by former president George W. Bush and a Republican-led Congress that turned a blind eye to their leader's flagrant spending on the war in Iraq and his staunch philosophy toward business that regulating them is wrong.

But Strickland, who by one recent poll may still be popular enough to beat any Republican opponent in 2010 when he runs for relection, is taking lightning strikes from Republicans, who want to see his apple cart upended at all costs, and from Ohio media, which is less timid to assign more of the blame for a bad economy on the good governor and his budget director,, who has been lambasted for poor prognostications that fewer statehouse watchers put much faith in these days.

In a one-two punch from Ohio's Greatest Newspaper, the lead editorial in last week's Columbus Dispatch pegged Gov. Strickland and his new Democratic House of Representatives with performing a "profound disservice to the state" by ignoring reality and putting off tough decisions.

Part of Strickland's budget problems stem from his use of $7 billion in one-time federal stimulus money to patch program funding for the next two years while whistling past the graveyard of future budgets that won't have manna from heaven to rely on.

A second problem was the gamesmanship over budget numbers and forecasts used by the Ohio House to justify adding even more funding to placate social service advocates who saw their clients going without with no happy ending in sight. Adding to the mess are the happy budget forecasts Strickland received from the Legislative Service Commission that House Democrats relied on when they padded the budget and passed it to the Senatet, where Republicans rule the roost.

Further exacerbating his budget woes is the news that funding for his new education plan, a plan he said would make or break his administration in terms of being successful, was determined to be under-funded by more than $1 billion.

Republicans, who have been good at throwing brick bats at the phlegmatic governor but who have offered little in the way of realistic remedies, are as happy as pigs in mud over Strickland's plight. State Auditor Mary Taylor, the lone Republican to hold a statewide office after Democrats swept the election of 2006, estimated recently that the "structural deficit" will be as much as $4 billion in each year of the next two-year budget. But estimates are, well, estimates, and things could change, but no one can forecast with any certainty which direction change takes us in.

The paper's senior editor chided state leaders, including Strickland, House Speaker Armond Budish and Senate President Bill Harris, for not acting on the reality they can see before them. Joe Hallet said this about OhioWoe's difficult situation: "The state is bleeding jobs, 269,000 more in the past 15 months. The jobless rate is the highest in 25 years. More than one in 10 Ohioans receive food stamps. More than one-third of Ohio's schoolchildren qualify for the federal lunch program. Food pantries are overrun, and some have closed because they can't keep up with demand."

Hallett, whose paper's long tradition of siding with Republicans against Democrats and backing business over consumers, called for raising taxes, even though his paper regular demonizes the need to raise taxes on the wealthy or business in general.

While journalists are notoriously wrong about what will happen, the results of The Ohio Poll that gaged what OhiWoeans thought of the American Dream was cannily pertinent.

In a media release on whether OhioWoeans see trouble ahead, 46 percent said the next generation of working adults will be worse off economically than the current generation of workers.

"The poll found a majority of Ohioans pessimistic about their current economic conditions when compared to their parents and that a majority say the next generation will be 'worse off' than the generation working today," according to the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati that conducted the poll this April.

Thirty percent of Ohioans, the poll showed, said their household had been impacted by job loss during the last year.

Even though Mark Zandi, economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, said on the Nightly Business Report that the Great Recession had bottomed out, Ohio's woes will not soon rebound. Not having recovered from the recession of 2001, it's a long shot that Ohio can rebound from the crippling blows of lost jobs that will continue to roll its way, especially as we watch the fate of Chrysler and General Motors, two automakers who still employ tens of thousands Ohioans each.

In a news release today from Ohio junior U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), he said a proposed Chrysler plant closing in Ohio will make him explore "all avenues to keep jobs and economic activity in Twinsburg.” Brown said he has "discussed the Twinsburg closing with administration officials and will continue to fight for federal assistance.”

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com