Mike DeWine was right

Say what you will about Mike DeWine, and there is much that can be said, but he was right about the budget and about the stimulus back in February.

On the stimulus:

Whatever you think about the federal economic-stimulus plan, this much is clear: It’s going to be the most costly “free” money Ohio ever receives.

It is absurd to think that a one-time, short-term monetary shot in the arm will heal economic wounds that have been festering in this state for years. It is equally short-sighted to grow government at a time when we should be streamlining it. The more we expand Ohio government with this money, the more we’ll have to pay year after year in growth that we simply cannot sustain and with resources we simply do not have.

On how Ohio should have approached the budget:

Juggling the budget with borrowed money, like the banks on Wall Street did, isn’t going to work. And, unless we chart a radically new course and fundamentally rethink how this state operates, we only postpone Ohio’s day of reckoning.

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The crisis should be our mandate for change. While a massive $7.3 billion projected state budget deficit hurts — a lot — it forces us to look forward. Now is the time for Ohio to take some calculated risks, and ask: “Where is this state going to be in five, 10, 20 years? How do we reposition this state for the long run instead of just battening down the hatches to weather the economic storm?”

Ultimately, Ohio needs more jobs and a more competitive economy. Key to that is reforming our system of education. I commend the governor for spotlighting education in his recent state of the state address. But, what is troubling is that it is a promise-it-now, pay-for-it-later plan. Does anyone really think the federal government will have a $1 trillion stimulus again next year and in 2011, 2012, 2013? How do you pay for an expanded school year and day-long kindergarten when the one-shot money is gone?

Politicians are in the business of selling hope, but when there’s a real crisis, you have to act like it and use the bully pulpit to sound the alarm. That means bringing all the parties together — public and private sector and nonprofits — to start figuring out what to do. We need to get strategic about every major aspect of state government, look at it as if we were starting from scratch, and re-examine the functions of each department and agency.

We should, for example, overhaul Medicaid, which eats more than one-third of the state budget and is projected to grow rapidly for years to come. To get a better bang for our taxpayer bucks, the state needs to be a much smarter health-care purchaser, and get better prices and results.

If we would have followed his advice we would be in a lot better shape than we are right now.  Alas, this kind of thinking has been ignored, things have gotten worse, and the next budget cycle is going to bring some reckoning that few will enjoy.