Budget Crunch Time in the AL Senate Finance & Taxation General Fund Committee

I may have been a little bit irritated yesterday when I wrote the OpEd about the Democrat’s passive-aggressive shenanigans in the Alabama House. Just a teensy weensy bit. Maybe a smidgeon.

Oh, who am I kidding? Days like yesterday do bad things to my blood pressure.

In my defense, seeing all that foolishness happening when we still don’t have the budgets done is a bit frustrating. It’s even more concerning to those of us who’ve actually been paying attention to some of the budgeting process. It seems like far too few of our Glorious Leaders seem blissfully unaware that we’re staring down the barrel of a Special Session or even, God forbid, many long, desolate months of proration.

Remember proration? I do. I remember how un-fun proration was. I know just what a despicably disingenuous budgetary tactic it truly is.

For you children who’ve never experienced it, proration is what happens when politicians pass make-believe budgets with little or no connection to reality, knowing that the State can’t deficit spend. The craven politicians can brag about how much they spent funding all those wonderful projects, knowing full well that spending will automatically be cut when revenues don’t match the budget. The politicians can then blame that evil old proration, instead of the politicians (themselves) who were too spineless to make reasonable budgets in the first place.

Yes, I blame the politicians for proration, because it really is their fault.

Our Glorious Leaders on Goat Hill have ONE thing they HAVE to do every year—make the budgets. They have an entire support structure dedicated to helping them do this. They have ready access to revenue projections for the upcoming year. All they need is the backbone to set spending levels a little below those estimates “just in case,” with maybe a little extra set aside for emergencies.

Fortunately, there are at least a few individuals in the Legislature with the good sense and intestinal fortitude to do this. 

I was heartened to see State Senators Greg Albritton (R-22) and Linda Coleman-Madison (D-20) speaking calmly and seriously about across-the-board budget cuts in last week’s Senate Finance and Taxation General Fund Committee meeting. Neither of them are happy with the cuts they’re contemplating, but both appear to understand that cuts now are better than the uncertainty of proration in the months to come.

Will making these cuts be fun for them? Certainly not. They’ll catch heat from every direction. Are the cuts necessary? Absolutely.

An economic downturn is virtually inevitable within the next few months. Our State is looking at significantly less revenue as all those buckets of Biden Bucks go dry. All those trillions of dollars of “federal money” that fell out of the Federal Reserve's money printers are why we had 20% inflation, and now have a $37 trillion national debt. Combine that with the effects of President Trump’s tariffs—which WILL slow the economy but ARE necessary if we’re going to rebuild our industrial base—and the short-term outlook is pretty grim.

The last few years, between COVID money and Biden’s insane spending, our Legislature has gotten used to spending like drunken Congressmen. That has to stop, now; and it will, one way or another.

Even if the way it stops is by proration, it WILL stop.

But, I have high hopes that the Senators in the Finance Committee will have the strength to do the stopping before it gets to that point. We’ll see what happens in the Committee meeting today.

Meanwhile—do you think we could introduce a little proration to the U.S. Congress?

Just a thought.

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