Bellying Up to the Trough

Paul Krugman wrote an article entitled "Fifty Herbert Hoovers" where he contended that state budget cuts, though required by constitutional demands for balanced budgets, were precisely the wrong measure for these times. Basically, defunding programs will result in decreased demand, fueling the recessionary spiral. Mr. Krugman lined up against federalism, noting that federal control of these issues would provide the proper economic tools to weather bad times. He argued for a heavy dose of fiscal medicine.

He's not entirely wrong (and since he has a Nobel Prize in economics, I'm sure he'd be glad to hear me say so). Yet the problem with Washington funding schools is that it cuts, spends, and regulates with too broad a brush. For example, the stimulus package that passed the House allocates $88.6 million to Milwaukee for school construction over the next two years. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Milwaukee School District has declining student enrollments and 15 empty school buildings.

"The amounts for MPS are particularly eye-catching, and not only because they are the largest in the state. Enrollment is declining every year, and the last major wave of construction in MPS - the $102 million Neighborhood School Initiative launched in 2000 - resulted in projects that are underused, have not met enrollment projections or have closed. A series in the Journal Sentinel in August detailed how tens of millions of dollars in construction spending did not produce the expected results, and the project as a whole has not led to a higher percentage of students attending neighborhood schools."

Districts in Maine are hurting and need a lot of help. The stimulus package would provide a lot of help. I urged Sens. Collins and Snowe to support it, and I hope you did too. You could call Sen. Collins' DC office at (202) 224-2523 and Senator Snowe's office at 1-800-432-1599 if you did not want to use the cyberlobby link in the previous post. But we should all recognize that reasonable people can disagree about this bill. Folks who oppose it are not necessarily being mean, petty, or vindictive -- they may well just be concerned that we can't afford to drop an extra $100 billion or so on projects that aren't necessary or productive.