Posted on: Friday, March 14, 2003

EDITORIAL
State budget is too important for games

Granted, the new two-year state budget as prepared by the state House this week is little more than a "work in progress," as Finance Chairman Dwight Takamine put it.

But another way to look at it — and this applies to the state Senate and the Lingle administration as well — is that the budget is little more than a political football at this point. It is hardly the reasonable, balanced spending plan that should emerge at the end of the session.

What's needed now is for all three sides in this triangulated debate — House, Senate and administration — to get off their preset positions, sit down with one another and make the best of what is admittedly a bad situation.

The Senate's approach to a massive budget crunch appears to be a multimillion-dollar general excise tax hike. Both the House and Lingle say "no sale" to that.

The House approach, at this point, is to pass on a budget that balances by making painful and almost certainly untenable cuts to education and social welfare spending. House Health Committee Chairman Dennis Arakaki put it bluntly:

"It may be hard for some of our colleagues to realize that this budget may mean life or death to some of our citizens."

The administration approach appears to continue to rest on themes surfaced during the recent campaign: that there is enough fat, either in the form of unnecessary or over-funded programs, to bring the budget under control without raising taxes or raiding special funds such as the Hurricane Relief Fund.

If that is so, most of that "fat" has yet to be identified. Even Lingle appointees say they would have trouble meeting their obligations under current levels of funding.

So, what happens now?

The Senate must be prepared to offer alternatives to the excise tax hike, if that becomes necessary. The House must be prepared to offer a downsized budget that does not take aim at the most politically sensitive, and thus difficult to cut, programs.

The administration must come up with a specific list of trims and unnecessary spending that it has identified during its first 100 days in office.

Then all three must sit down and work out a compromise that makes the best sense, both on the basis of the state's resources and its obligations.

It's entertaining to use the budget as a bargaining tool or political football, but it hardly serves the public's interest.