By Lee Graczyk
MnSF director of public policy

In the not too distant past, state and local public officials attempted budget cuts with the precision of a surgeon. These public officials nervously held their scalpels to make cuts designed to inflict the least amount of pain. This year, there is no pretense of precision. It’s gas up the chainsaw and let them rip.

Here’s what we hear: “Drastic times call for drastic measures. In any case, the patient has been living a dubious lifestyle and it is that lifestyle that is responsible for the need for surgery. The growth of Ôgovernment programs’ has been a cancer that now must be removed and if some of the good tissue is removed in the process we will just have to hope it grows back. It’s time to remove the dangerous toxins of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement these programs have delivered. After all, we are only throwing out a little of the baby with the bath water. This is no time for coddling, we can nurture later, if we must, but now we must get on with the business at hand.” These are the commonly heard refrains in this surgery.

While surgeons cut, relatives of many of their victims sit anxiously weighing odds of survival and quality-of-life issues that surround the surgeries’ outcome. And though it dominates every waking hour of the dramas’ various participants, its outcomes aren’t felt much outside the surgery theater until to varying degrees things don’t work out as expected: Police and fire departments don’t respond to calls as fast; roads aren’t fixed and plowed in a timely manner; parks and libraries close; local hospitals and schools close or limit hours; public transportation stops running; unemployment payments stop; more homes go into foreclosure; another financial institution goes belly up.

Because in the past these types of patients have incurred cuts and, contrary to the predictions of previous naysayers, have survived, other treatments need not even be considered. Surgery is the only cure for a sick government before it further infects an already failing economy. Though some surgeons fear that their incision threatens “a major setback” in the patient’s long-term health, they have convinced themselves they can’t worry about that now. Remember, not putting names and faces to patients makes the task at hand easier; simply reach for the chainsaw, don’t bother to sterilize the instrument, there isn’t time, there are other patients needing similar attention, one has to expect casualties.

Yes it’s a bloody mess, but how were we to know the economy would become so anemic? We thought the medicine of targeted tax cuts would save all patients. In Dr. Pawlenty’s recent budget lecture he advocated targeting corporate taxes for cuts, proving everyone is getting cut and sharing the pain!