KELO-TV offers a great graphic that shows you what happens to your municipal budget when you elect Republican golden boys to run your city:
Nothing happens. Republicans like Paul TenHaken don’t cut the budget. They use the Republican branding to get elected by low-attention voters, and then they keep growing taxes and spending just like whoever came before them.
There are no Republicans in power in South Dakota, just opportunists.
Okay Cory. Instead of a small, no substance post how about you demonstrate to all of those reading how the increases and what is happening is bad for Sioux Falls. I look forward to an honest story instead of an intellectually dishonest piece hating those opposite of your political beliefs.
Up for the challenge?
Steve, I think you make Cory’s point on spending and political branding for him: this issue in not the quality of the outcomes from spending, it is the false conservative branding to be the spending cutters to get elected – then being big spenders when governing.
My question is more fundamental, if we all agree that spending is good and necessary and produces wonderful outcomes for people (which even Steve implies in his challenge to Cory above), then why not elect rafts of candidates who promise those very things? If it is going to happen and be welcomed, why the intellectual dishonesty of running and electing folks who say this is awful?
If fiscal conservatives actually delivered on their campaign promises, they would be ousted by an irate electorate.
No, actually I don’t. You make it out like it’s such an easy argument, one side or the other. That is incorrect. There are so many variables and factors. Paul could be going into the mayoral’s office with a mind to cut, gets in there and realizes vital spending increase needs to happen so he does it effectively. Instead of just running on spending and attacking rich people and promising govt control and benefits of everything (Left). Ultimately I do not know and it behooves Cory to know the facts if he’s going to write a very short piece bashing Paul simply because he’s a Republican. You can do better, I hope.
And you can’t say we all fundamentally agree that spending is good. It can be good or bad. So, again, there’s so much more to it.
Steve. Of course there is nuance in all argument. But why is a candidate who endorses spending – then spends – a bad candidate, and a candidate who condemns spending – then spends – a good candidate? Have you really divorced campaigning and governance?
You challenged Cory to show that this spending is bad. You are a conservative, are you saying this spending (in context) is good?
If a candidate endorses spending for just the sake of spending they suck. If they can explain why spending is needed with facts then I don’t think any person would disagree. And Yes, I have divorced the two because they are two different things. Obama, for example, ran on many things that he ended up not doing. It happens. It’s different when you get in there. For me, I’d rather have someone run on being fiscally conservative, then get in there and do what is necessary with facts to back it up. So that is why I asked because I hope that’s why Paul increased spending.
Cory simply introduced the KELO story, it speaks for itself.
I wonder if Pearson read the KELO story before jumping on his high horse.
No, it does not. Cory’s article is a negative at Paul. So the increases shown and simple explanations in the article must be bad in Cory’s mind. Right Cory?
Steve, who runs on spending just for the sake of spending? You have contrived the ultimate fictional straw-man candidate. Candidates who “run on spending” actually are doing what you say: they are running on DOING things and recognize the truth that doing things costs money.
seriously o. I mean running on new programs, more spending, increases etc.
Steve, even this capitulation is inaccurate. New programs (and subsequent spending increases) are to achieve a goal. President Obama did not run to spend more money; he did not run to create a new healthcare program; he ran to give ALL Americans health care coverage. The program and the spending work back from that. I believe it is only a conservative tactic to label so much “tax-and-spend-liberalism” only to avoid the REAL discussion of people in need and meeting those social responsibilities of a just society.
In the vein, “cutting spending” gets to be a conservative mantra only about spending and not about the real, devastating effects of programing cuts for those in need (homeless, hungry, children, elderly, veterans . . .).
Wait a minute. Look at the Federal govt. We are continuing into huge deficits and the budget crap we keep seeing does NOTHING with the actual large part of the budget that’s out of control. Our spending on entitlements is out of control for example.
Another RINO at work!
Steve, I disagree. The budget deficit is driven by out of control spending on defense, foreign wars, and catastrophic wealth grabs by the rich to retract their fair tax burdens.
I would however like to know what you are including in “entitlements.” Would that be focused on the poor or inclusive of the billionaire welfare queens?
This is the reason we are out collecting signatures to redefine the Sioux Falls City Council. There must be contols put into place to prevent out of control borrowing to continue uncontrolled growth all done on the backs of a few taxpyers.
Our Triple Check the Charter forces the mayor to build a stronger conscientious of Council members he would nolonger, lead to borrow the millions he wants to spend.
The gamimg of the elections by partisans changing the processes also will be curtailed. By putting into Charter the earlier promised plurality method.
This is a positive improvement for people and just good government.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent over half the expenditure of the Federal Govt.
It’s always entertaining to watch the GOP cry about liberals being profligate spenders, when budget facts show that elected conservatives in DC and many state and local governments, like SF, are the true budget busters. The GOP cannot budget. Like GWB and Economic Eunuch, they trash the government’s budget so citizens elect a Democrat to come in and fix it, like Clinton, Obama and whoever begins repairing the current GOP enabled fiscal disaster in 2020.
Once upon a time, and maybe we have to go back to Eisenhower in the 1950s, there were economically competent Republicans. Not any more. Ten Haken either didn’t know what he was talking about when he campaigned, which smacks of incompetence, or he lied. The SDGOP has lived off federal welfare to SD for many, many decades and of course the 21st century GOP presidents have been total, economy destroying boobs.
A sound, functional economy good for all citizens requires liberal, democratic socialist values. US history illustrates that.
Agreed (48.24% including unemployment); however, defense is 15% of the budget (FAR more than other nations – more than the next seven combined), we are throwing $45 billion annually into the Afghanistan war, and President Trump’s tax cuts will cost $ 2.3 – 5.5 to trillion over the next 10 years. So although it is easy to look at entitlements as the big spender, there is plenty of non-entitlement spending to look at as well; these other examples are more “out of control” as you put it. The left just doesn’t work as hard to demonize those who put that money in there pockets as much as the right demonizes the poor who need entitlements.
Am I reading the chart correctly: the two big growth areas are Highways and Streets and Water Reclamation. Just imagine if President Trump (and the GOP) would have followed through with his infrastructure promise; I imagine those would have been prime targets for federal investment and maybe eased the financial burden on Sioux Falls as well AND made life better for folks in SF.
Pearson, you should give up your crush on Cory. He’s married with children.
O is exactly right. When Steve feels the need to defend a favored Republican from apt criticism of failure to live up to the GOP’s stated principles, he demands reasonable, nonpartisan analysis of the realistic fiscal needs of smart government. When Democrats step forward to offer exactly that explanation of why we need to spend more to meet the needs of our community, Steve and his Republican candidates will scream, “Tax-and-spend Democrats!!! Waaaaah!!!”
So no, Steve, I don’t have to bite at your desperate flacking for Republican hypocrisy, not until you promise to give up the cheap Republican sloganeering, acknowledge the fact that South Dakota Republicans are hypocrites, and demand the same sober and comprehensive analysis of fiscal realities if them that you pretend to want from me right now.
O is further right about infrastructure: public investment in roads and pipes makes daily living and business possible. Robust government investment is essential to the health of the free market and our practical liberty.
I say to Mayor TenHaken, go ahead, invest. But be honest about it, not just when you ask for the money, but when you campaign for rehire in 2022.
O says, “The left just doesn’t work as hard to demonize those who put that money in there pockets as much as the right demonizes the poor who need entitlements.” True that. We Democrats are consistently honest about the need for smart public investments in the general welfare. As Steve, TenHaken, and other RINOs demonstrate, “Republicans” scream that taxes and government spending are bad during election years, then tax (tariffs!) and spend (everything Trump signed) on all they want, without any expectation that they should show the restraint they promised during their campaigns.
Wheres all those high paying jobs mayor, better go see the working poor at the banquet.Unbelievable.
Immigrants contributed about 3 billion bucks to SS every year and can’t collect benefits.
I’m as liberal as they come, but I’m also fiscally conservative. I don’t spend on every little desire I might have. I don’t expect government to do it, either. I certainly don’t like wasting resources, and that includes the money the government collects from me and others. But a proposed budget is not spending money recklessly, or out-of-control. It’s not even spending money at all. It’s simply a proposed blueprint for how you see money being spent over a certain timeline. A proposed budget is just a set of spending priorities based on a scenario of projected revenue.
Budgeting is quite a bit different at different levels of government. At the municipal level, you won’t get anyone who is “spending for the sake of spending,” as Steve said above. That’s a talking point, but it’s proven wrong every year.
As a liberal, I opposed all the increases in taxes voted on in Rapid City between 1988 and 2001. All those tax increases came as the result of mayors (non-partisan but mostly registered as Republicans) and the Chamber of Commerce (largely Republican). The money was largely for socialized efforts that benefited special interest groups close to the Republican Party. After the rich got served first, some of the money went to good projects. Is that “spending for the sake of spending.?” No. That spending served the Republican special interests.
Now, when I look at Ten Haken’s major increases, I see Highways and Streets and Water Reclamation. One could to an examination of why those areas are getting increases. Is there a need, is it “spending for the sake of spending,” or is it paying off special interests? I’m not familiar enough with the streets in Sioux Falls, but in Madison, WI, they are always a cause for griping. Spending on streets is usually popular, but I also know that road construction and road building materials companies in South Dakota are run largely by Republicans. With regard to Water Reclamation, I thought I saw a news story about needing to upgrade the system in Sioux Falls. I’m not sure how your utilities are run in Sioux Falls anymore, but when I was there I think it was billed out as a user fee. Am I right? If so, that would be different than a “tax increase.”
Donald, we now have to cover all water and sewer updates and upgrades through user fees because the abuses of uncontrolled spending by the administrations we’ve had. Years ago it was decided vanity building projects were more important than basic needs of citizens. So now we have failed parking ramps, deficit indoor swimming pool, a poorly designed office building and an event center unable to pay its way just name a few things.
Bruce,
User fees, I think, make sense for utilities. For one, tax exempt properties can’t escape paying their fair share. But the rate schedule for fee collection makes a difference. In the past, high volume water users and major polluters got special rates weren’t fair to Joe Homeowner, who essentially subsidized businesses. I think a lot of that changed with changes in the Clean Water Act decades ago when pre-treatment by companies came into practice. But you might want to check the rates to make sure things are fair.