State budget cuts create costs, no matter how we count it or what we call it

Perhaps it's the influence of my young children, or the arrival in earnest of the summer season – but I have spent the last week trying to understand the state budget debate as a grand game of sorts. But how should we observers interpret the rules?
It's a Counting Game
Governor Pawlenty insists on a very particular approach to counting, and as the executive, he plays a key role in shaping the rules. He fought to adopt and preserve an accounting of the state's budget that presumes inflation in revenues but not in state expenditures, avoiding arguments that a more responsible approach is to anticipate inflation on both sides – or neither side – of the equation for state budgeting.
Families across Minnesota are dealing with the recession in part by looking to pick up jobs and add income, while reducing expenses. Few of us are attempting to implement accounting shifts or adopt hard-and-fast prohibitions of either reducing expenses or adding income.
The resolution of the legislative session reflects Governor Pawlenty's apparent conviction that cutting existing budget priorities is the only way to balance the budget, and that (as an example) rebalancing the income tax for more revenue is out of order. I'm grateful I don't have to run my business or plan a household budget that way.
It's a Word Game
Some state leaders were left disgruntled in 2005 by the passage of a state "health impact fee," commonly known as a tobacco tax. To them, a tax is a tax. That's fair.
In fact, I would suggest one step further: A tax is a tax is a tax. Meaning, cuts to local governments will further burden property tax payers to fund core services such as police, fire and water. Meaning, reductions in payments to hospitals by $365 million will create higher insurance premiums and the compounding costs of treating the deferred ailments of the uninsured (ask the editors of the Ely Timberjay for their perspective on this front). It doesn't matter what we call the consequences of cuts – further losses of jobs and economic activity, for starters. We could also call them taxes, surcharges, fees, or anti-investments. What matters most is that we account for these consequences as real and as the result of an exclusive reliance on cutting the budget for its balancing.
It's No Game at All
Of course, while politics may look and feel like a game at times, its outcomes are anything but. The decisions we make regarding what resources are devoted to which public uses are critical – and Minnesota's future depends on reaching such decisions deliberately. The current recession certainly hasn't made it easy, but has made it all the more important.