A RUNAWAY SPENDING PLAN FOR MISSOURI

Missouri taxpayers, grab your wallets!

Preparations for the state's next budget -- details to be revealed by Gov. Mel Carnahan in his State of the State Address in January -- indicate spending will soar $750 million for various agencies and projects. That is a whopping 6.1 percent, nearly three times the rate of inflation, and it comes at a time when taxpayers already are owed hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds for being overtaxed in recent years.

Any prudent Missourian will do a little head shaking and wonder, based on common sense and simple arithmetic, why the Carnahan administration thinks it is necessary to spend $15.6 billion in the fiscal year that begins next July 1, when $14.7 billion was adequate for the current fiscal year.

And most of Missouri's taxpayers will look at their recent paycheck stubs, their family budgets and their checking account balances. Most of them already know their pay hasn't gone up 6 percent this year. Spending on family needs is already stretching every dollar to its limit. And, while many of the state's residents are enjoying the current national economic climate, their bank balances don't show a lot of room for runaway spending by state government -- which, of course, will be financed by Missouri citizens through income and sales taxes or through retail purchases and service fees that are priced to cover the increasing cost of state government.

Since Carnahan took office in 1993, he has had a hand in six state budgets, including the one on the drawing boards in Jefferson City for next year. In that time, state spending will have exploded more than 43 percent, provided his proposed budget is adopted by the General Assembly. And it usually is, with minor tinkering here and there.

The governor and his stalwart supporters will defend such an outrageous increase in state spending by pointing to previous administrations who, they claim, were even more profligate. Such an argument totally misses the point of incumbent accountability. Carnahan is governor now, and by virtue of his election he must be held accountable for the spending spree of his two terms in office.

Carnahan's budget builders also will, in defense of their total disregard for taxpayers' pocketbooks, point to the hundreds of millions of additional dollars being spent on schools and construction of new prisons -- one of the fastest growing industries in the state -- and ask if Missourians haven't benefited under the current administration and its spending policies.

What most Missourians will ask themselves is whether or not their income has gone up 43 percent since 1993 -- long before they engage in any meaningful introspection about whether or not Missouri is safer today than it was five years ago because more criminals have been stockpiled behind bars.

What Missouri needs is legislators who will heed the taxpayers and address two glaring issues: 1. Overtaxation and the yet-to-be-paid refunds that are due. 2. A growth pattern in state spending that has no basis in the real world of low inflation and a national trend to cut government spending and its companion tax burden.

Of course, it would be a mark of true leadership if the current governor would lead the charge on these two points.