Montgomery County Republican Party Line: News & Events June 6 2009

As California goes, so goes Maryland?

Maryland map

Reflections of a native Californian and long-time Marylander, Stella Green

First, you can get a good picture of your taxes in Maryland by clicking on this tax estimator, a tool for calculating the true bottom line that you pay to Montgomery County and to the state. This estimator provides the clearest transparency yet into the expansiveness and expensiveness of our state and county services (not to mention the bloated bureaucracies they are truly meant to serve.) We can thank the Maryland Public Policy Institute for this tax estimator, an excellent resource. But make sure you are sitting down if you dare to use it, because the results will astound and appall you.

Next, consider the path of California. Governor Schwartznegger just announced that the state's "day of reckoning" has come. That's an interesting choice of words because it amounts to an admission that the imminent economic collapse was entirely predictable -- brought on by the wreckless spending habits of the Democrat-dominated legislature of that state, along with the many local sinkholes of spending that dot the whole state, most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco. And what about the California taxpayers who foot the bill? They have been moving out to more tax friendly states such as Nevada. The same pattern is now evident in Maryland as well. (See story below.)

Finally, look at what the Democrats in Annapolis wish for the state of Maryland. The California pattern of spending should instantly come to mind when you make some comparisons:

A universal health care plan that gets off the ground with stratospheric spending rates such as those of California's Medi-Cal program. Medi-Cal which was created in 1966 now pays for nearly half of all births in California and two-thirds of all nursing home residents.
Funding of tuition for financially eligible students without regard to cost. Read about my personal experience with this below.
Over-regulation and over-taxation of businesses

The list goes on, but it all boils down to a bloated bureaucracy spitting out your hard-earned money like a firehose on steroids.

None of this is to say I didn't enjoy or appreciate the services offered to me by the Golden State. Because I came from a lower-income family, while in college I was a recipient of a full California State Scholarship and, as a graduate student, I even received a California State Fellowship. At the time, the unsustainable big spending picture never really occurred to me. However, in retrospect I can fully appreciate why the state of California has gone broke. Translated into today's dollars and tuition costs, California taxpayers funded my education to the tune of over $200,000 at USC, a private university. I had a multitude of classmates who received the same scholarship. It should have been clear back then that this sort of spending was unsustainable. Yet the California State Scholarship Commission still promises such scholarships for financially eligible students with at least a 2.4 -- in some cases 2.0 -- grade point average.

For many decades now, government computers in the state capital of Sacramento have been spitting out money so profigately that I have no doubt a huge chunk of it never sees its intended beneficiaries. Case in point: after I finished my Master's Degree, the Scholarship Commission sent me a brand new award letter meant for someone else but with my name on it, guaranteeing another full year of full tuition at USC. I reported the administrative error to the assigned bureaucrat in Sacramento who perfunctorily said she'd make a note of it. (The amount in today's dollars would probably be about $40,000.)

California, of course, is planning to deal with its problem by becoming completely certified as a ward of the Federal bureaucracy. Gov. O'Malley's Maryland has no problem going the same route. The question is no longer where the proverbial buck stops, but whether or not even a penny can be salvaged of that buck.