MISSOURIANS: IT'S TIME FOR A TAX CUT

Claims that Gov. Carnahan's administration has somehow reduced costs and otherwise relieved the taxpaying burden are hollow and riddled to the core with public-relations maneuvering without substance. It is time to come to grips with reality. And the best conclusion from this reality check is that Missourians are due for a tax cut.

Carnahan's $13.2 billion spending spree for the fiscal year that starts July 1 is nearly double state budgeting of a mere eight years ago. The runaway increases cut across political boundaries -- five of those budget years, all increases, were under former Gov. Ashcroft -- and have occurred despite the original Hancock Amendment, which was supposed to protect taxpayers from outlandish growth in spending as well as taxation.

Much of the increases, both Ashcroft and Carnahan can claim, were due to impulses beyond the state's control. Funding for federally mandated programs and grants, for example, will cost Missouri taxpayers about $3.5 billion in the next fiscal year, up from $1.3 billion in fiscal 1988.

But in general revenue -- this is money derived from state taxes -- spending has grown by leaps and bounds. In fiscal 1988, the state had $3.4 billion to spend from general-revenue sources. In the coming fiscal year, Carnahan's budget calls for spending $5.7 billion from the same sources. That is a whopping 68 percent increase, nowhere near the rate of inflation. If the state's general revenue spending had increased over the past eight years at a modest rate of only 4 percent, well below the overall rate of inflation, general fund spending for the coming year would be in the neighborhood of $4.7 billion -- a whole billion dollars less than the Carnahan budget.

What's a billion dollars? It depends on your perspective. Some see an extra billion dollars available to be spent on new and expanded programs. But others -- and this is where other states are headed as well -- see the opportunity to use the revenue growth to give the taxpayers a break.

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey made that very point in her response, on behalf of Republicans, to President Clinton's State of the Union message. Whitman was elected on the promise she would cut taxes in that state by 30 percent. A lot of hard-core politicians laughed at the idea, but the voters of New Jersey took her message to heart. Now the politicians are well on their way to enacting the tax cuts, as promised by the governor.

Nationwide, more than two dozen states are seriously looking at reducing the burden of government on taxpayers. They intend to cut taxes in a significant way.

Of course, two governors alone cannot be blamed for the doubling in Missouri's spending over an eight-year period. Taxpayers have had a hand in the binge too. They have gone to the polls and approved increases in special taxes -- fuel for highways is one of the big ones. And they have approved gambling, which generates even more money in the state coffers.

The Carnahan administration has taken the smoke-and-mirrors approach to dealing with questioning taxpayers. The boast -- and it certainly sounds good -- is that the proposed state budget includes 320 fewer employees than the current year's budget. In fact, the total reduction in full-time equivalent employees has dropped by almost 1,000, but next year's budget includes adding 650 new employees for the Department of Corrections. But has state spending on employees dropped from one year to the next? You guessed it. State spending on employees is growing in spite of the claimed cuts. How? Because some of the cuts the administration is counting were actually positions funded in the current budget but never filled. How's that for creative accounting?

With every discussion of a tax cut comes the responsibility to face up to spending reductions. Recently, Carnahan's aides responded to a question about less spending by posing another question: What would you do? This is where government so often misses the point. Taxpayers are looking to elected officials to respond to the growing clamor for tax cuts. Is this the best elected officials can do: throw up their hands and say, "We don't know. You tell us"? In effect, too many politicians think taxpayers don't want to suffer from funding cuts. So, they conclude, there is an unbreachable safety zone that protects runaway spending. These politicians believe taxpayers only want funding cuts if it hurts someone else.

That's hogwash. Taxpayers are smart enough to know that reductions in taxation are equivalent to spending less. But taxpayers are also smart enough to know that real cuts in spending mean reducing the number of state employees who are really on the payroll. It means creating efficient and streamlined government that costs less rather than providing window dressing for a budget that just keeps growing and growing and growing.

The effort so far has been to divert attention from anything resembling a tax cut in Missouri by focusing on a tax-limitation amendment. This comes in the wake of the failure last year of the labyrinthian Hancock II proposal. The thinking is that voters will be lulled into a comfort zone by the passage of an amendment that actually wouldn't do a thing to plug the hole in the state's money machine.

Instead of a tax limit, taxpayers better wake up to the need for a tax cut. This is the only way spending will ever be reined in before we are faced with another doubling in the cost of state government.