Normally, one of the few advantages to being a minority party is greater unity. Party leaders in those circumstances can sometimes put aside their differences to rally behind the common goal of seizing power. But that is far from the case with Maryland’s Republican Party.
In September, the House GOP released a fiscal plan calling for tax cuts, a spending freeze and a slots license auction that they claim would raise more money than would the slots referendum. Democrats criticized them for not being specific about their spending cuts. However, in a March 2008 budget proposal, House Republicans did offer a few specific cuts which we reproduce below:
A few notes on the acronyms. OPEB refers to “other post-employment benefits,” which are primarily comprised of health benefits for retirees. The Government Accounting Standards Board recently required state and local governments to report the value of their unfunded liabilities, prompting many governments to establish contribution schedules to minimize them. The Republican proposal would delay the state’s plan to fund its OPEB liabilities. (One wonders if that would impact the state’s credit rating.) GCEI refers to the “geographic cost of education index,” a component of the Thornton state education plan that channels money to jurisdictions with higher education costs. The primary beneficiaries of GCEI, which was partially funded for the first time by the O’Malley administration, are Baltimore City, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County. Because none of those jurisdictions are represented by Republicans, it makes a sort of self-serving sense for them to target those areas for cuts.
And so, here are some real spending cuts suggested by Republicans. The problem is that they are opposed… by other Republicans. When we pointed out in a prior post that new Senate GOP Leader Allan Kittleman denounced spending cuts proposed by the Governor, Senator Kittleman commented in part:
Governor O’Malley’s proposal to now cut one-quarter billion dollars from a budget only three months old will wreak havoc to state employees and those who depend upon state services for their livelihood. We are distressed at the prospect of drastic cuts that could have been avoided if the Administration had opted for restraint in new spending over the last two years…
Maryland’s employees are facing job losses or furloughs in addition to cuts to other resources that will hamper their abilities to perform their jobs. This did not have to happen if wise budget decisions had been made earlier in the formation of the budget.
State employees are dedicated, hard-working public servants who do not deserve this personal crisis in their lives due solely to misguided budget policy of the current Administration.
In addition, the silence of the Senate GOP to the House GOP’s plan is deafening.
Maryland’s Republicans have two inter-related problems. First, their House and Senate delegations cannot work together. That is exacerbated by disagreements within each caucus. Speaker Mike Busch and Big Daddy are licking their chops over this because these coordination problems make it that much easier to roll over the GOP.
But secondly, and much more seriously, the Republican Party cannot figure out what it stands for. Is it a Democrat-lite party as represented by Senator Kittleman’s comments? Is it a conservative party in line with Senator Alex Mooney and Delegate Don Dwyer? Or is it just a rag-tag bunch of dead-enders united only by the “R” next to their names and a common resentment of Governor O’Malley? The party is avoiding these questions and is instead bogged down in tactical and personal debates, such as whether to get rid of its current state chairman, making accusations of “arrogance” against Congressional candidate Andy Harris and gleefully indulging in scratching, hissing cat fights.
My advice to the GOP is to be true to itself and follow the path of Red Maryland. In line with the state’s conservative bloggers, the party should advocate for 1. drastic spending cuts, 2. paying state workers the minimum wage, 3. privatizing transportation projects, 4. spying on groups with a “shady past,” 5. the notion that man-made global warming is “sheer utopian nonsense,” and 6. wishing for a Bradley Effect to stop Democrats. They might not get a lot of votes with these positions, but at least they’d stand for something!