Ezra Klein has helped ruin my afternoon by directing my attention to this thoroughly depressing report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities about the parlous fiscal conditions of the states. A few points.
The report details service cuts, some of them quite drastic and some of them (to be honest) difficult but not catastrophic - the vast majority of them, of course, falling on lower-income people, who tend to be neither seen nor heard. It notes also that about a dozen states have raised some kind of taxes (income, sales, etc.) somewhat significantly.
The most alarming thing here to me by far is that the state of Florida is raising tuition at public universities by 15% for the coming academic year. That's on top of a 17% hike last year. That's 32% in two years.
No one in the world thinks that is good public policy. It's just impossible to think that squeezing that many students, how many thousands, out of a college education (which is to say, out of a lifetime of advancement, taxpaying, making contributions to society etc.) is a good idea. And yet, the few hundred people who are charged with the making of public policy in Florida, from Charlie Crist on down, just did it. And Florida isn't alone. Google "state tuition hikes" and you'll see more. Some are small, some are pretty hefty.
These moves are the direct result of less federal aid. States can't run deficits. Washington can. So here is exactly where the rubber meets the road, and where ideological choices must be made, and where American society makes the wrong ones.
Deficit hawks caterwaul about leaving our children and grandchildren in debt. There's something to that, but come on, it's fairly abstract. A tuition hike, however, affects "our children and grandchildren" (depending on how old "we" are) and is pretty damn concrete. Why is it better to make young people pay 32% more for a education today, instead of giving states more aid and attending to the deficit when we have the money to attend to it?
It isn't better. It's absurd. Klein writes:
If states have to cut $120 billion from their budgets, that money -- and the things it does -- will just leave the economy. There will be fewer jobs, higher taxes, less financial aid. None of that is speculative. There's no theory in which it doesn't happen. This is a large economic contraction that we've decided to allow, because we would prefer to allow it [rather] than to put down the money -- much less money, incidentally, than it will cost to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich -- necessary to prevent it.
Of everything that's happened since the financial crisis, this is, to me, the most frustrating. It is a decision we, as a polity, are making to prolong our economic pain and slow our economic recovery. It is needless and senseless and largely the result of political, rather than economic, disagreement. And when it happens, we will all look around at one another and lament our slow recovery, and our terrible economy, and our inept political leaders, who have clearly done something wrong, even if we're not sure exactly what.
I am certain that if it were possible to sit down with the people of Florida (or wherever) individually or in small groups and talk this through for 10 minutes, the vast majority would agree that imposing 32% in tuition hikes is a worse idea than running a slightly larger federal deficit for a little while. A clear majority would say it's common sense. But we cannot do it.
I'm not a catastrophist about budget cuts. Most state agencies can absorb 3 or 4% across the board without too much pain. But raising tuition on people striving to become maximal contributors to society, and raising state and local taxes, so people can keep their federal tax cut (!?!?)...stupid and offensive. But oh so American I guess.
