Carney’s Coffee Klatches
A recent Delaware State News article, Carney warning: Must solve budget woes, was a bit interesting on two fronts. First was a Rodney Village resident who said:
“(Carney) came down from Mount Olympus. Nobody else did,” Mr. Patz said. “I’ve been here since 1992 and (Ruth Ann) Minner never came down from Mount Olympus, (Tom) Carper never came down, (Jack) Markell never came down. Well, Gov. Carney came down.
“I was impressed by the fact that as a representative of the people he recognized, ‘We have a problem. We need help.’”
Carney going out and listening to the people of Delaware is a good thing, maybe even a great thing. How much he will listen is another story completely.
What scares me are Carney’s visits are is his realization that this budget shortfall is going to be difficult. As El Somnambulo has said, and I am paraphrasing, “What the hell was Carney thinking about in 2016?”.
Gov. Carney said the issue with the budget gets more difficult to solve each year the state puts off addressing the issues.
“The (budget) problem gets harder each year that you don’t fix the structural part of it,” he said. “The best way to address a structural fiscal deficit is to have a strong and growing economy.
“That will mean that your revenues will be coming in at a rate that’s the same pace as your expenses, or greater, and the expenses that you incur as a result of not having a robust economy, people that are unemployed that need services, that need Medicaid, those expenses will go up.”
Jesus Christ, the budget problem gets harder each year?
Wait, it gets better, I mean, worse.
“It’s time to solve Delaware’s budget challenges — we need to stop kicking the can down the road,” Gov. Carney said. “My team will work with Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly on a long-term budget solution.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Here are two things that Carney needs to remember in 2017: you’re the freaking Governor and you’re a Democrat — well, at least it said so on the ballot in November.
Tags: John Carney
And what he’s saying is, “we’re not going to fix anything that’s wrong with this state until we get economic growth,” Meanwhile, the state persists in giving tax breaks to corporations on the hope that this will generate more revenue when we all know that, once a tax break is given, the corporations’ accountants are masterful at tweaking the numbers so the tax savings are even larger than the state’s original estimates.
Couple of thoughts (AKA things I know will never happen):
1. How about saying we will temporarily raise taxes (corporate and personal income, especially the top bracket) until the businesses in the state create (pick a number) new jobs, which should produce sufficient tax revenues to cover the current shortfalls. In other words, “Dear big business and its leaders, until you create the jobs we need in Delaware, you’re going to have to pay more in taxes.”
2. How about getting a straight answer from Carney and every member of the General Assembly to this question: Will you support assessing higher taxes to improve programs that are essential to making Delaware a better state?
(I’d include education reform, better roads and improved programs for rehabilitating prison inmates on my list. Feel free to add others.)
For once, I’d like our elected officials to say they stand for something, and to say it’s worth paying for. I’m tired of them saying, “it’s broke, but we don’t have the money to fix it” because they’re waiting for the day when DuPont, JPMorgan, AZ or Bloom will suddenly dump millions more into the state’s coffers.
I’m fast coming to the conclusion that Carney ran for Governor b/c he lost last time and b/c he fancies himself a ‘competitor’. I can find no other explanation.
He’s known that he was going to be governor for more than a year now. He delayed delayed delayed his official entry into the race for over six months for a bunch of phony reasons (respect for Beau, surgery, waiting for the end of the legislative session).
He ran a content-free campaign the likes of which I’ve never seen from a would-be governor. Now that he’s been elected and sworn in, it doesn’t look like he gave a single thought to the issues he’d be facing.
The self-proclaimed ‘green eyeshade guy’ hadn’t thought about our budget deficit? Despite the prison problems that surfaced during the Minner Administration when he was Lt. Gov, he put someone with no corrections experience in charge of the prisons? As the News-Journal pointed out, he needs to appoint task forces to tell him what he should be thinking? As long as none of those task forces recommend higher taxes on the 1%?
I’m not just making sport of the guy. I honestly wonder whether he has what it takes to be governor. If he’s merely gonna continue to be a purple-robed acolyte for the Concord Coalition and the State Chamber, he should at least tell us and GTFO. For now, he’s the Incredible Shrinking Governor.
As near as I can tell, he is an invertebrate at a time when someone with a backbone is needed. Uh, that goes for every member of the General Assembly as well. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
As always, Democrats talk about jobs as if they’re something employers create magically, out of the goodness of their hearts.
Businesses don’t like to create jobs. They’d prefer to operate with as few expenses as possible, and payroll is the No. 1 expense in most businesses. When states throw money at corporations, it’s not to create jobs — it’s to move them from one place to another.
Saying economic growth will fix the state’s revenue problem (which is not a problem at all, as Delawareans are very lightly taxed) is the same as Jim Baker’s insistence that the only thing that would fix Wilmington’s gun-crime problem was the elimination of poverty: It’s the answer of a person without any ideas.
It’s hard to believe someone this lacking in leadership was once a successful quarterback. Too many hits to the head?
Carney keeps insisting that revenue growth will fix Delaware’s economic problems.
But Delaware’s economic growth is well within historic norms. I wish someone would post this graphic from the Federal Reserve:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DENGSP
What’s NOT in historic norms is income growth and the shrinking of the middle class. Since the recession ALL income growth has gone to the top 1%, while incomes for the rest of us have been flat or falling.
Here’s a graphic of Delaware median income:
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/delaware/
Listening tours don’t solve long term, serious budget problems in need of real leadership and backbone. Time to step up and lead….something this state is allergic to. The Delaware Way doesn’t know how to deal with that foreign concept.
Was just chatting with a fellow newshound. Our conclusion on Carney: “There is no there there.”
In his ideal world, he will spend four years creating commissions that will report back with all manner of grand ideas that the General Assembly will not act on because they cannot find the money in the current budget.
ElSom hit it just right, with both Carney and the GA: we need backbone, and we elect invertebrates.
There are about 68 weeks left in this campaign, so if you haven’t pledged $25 dollars toward helping Carney grow a spine, there is still time.
Puck:
Not to mention Delaware is only behind Utah in the largest labor force percentage decreases since the start of the recession:
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/economy-finance/state-labor-force-participation-rates-data.html
I can’t get over Carney’s irrational insistence on “growth alone.”
To solve our budget problems through economic growth alone, Delaware’s economic growth would have to be far higher that national GDP growth which would put us in bubble territory. There is nothing on the horizon that would raise Delaware’s growth one iota over national growth. Maybe Carney expects to hit oil off Rehoboth?
Carney needs to find the political courage for a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts. Unfortunately, I don’t think the voters are helping him find that courage.
That’s why Jason’s campaign for pledges to primary Carney is so important.
To emphasize, it COSTS NOTHING up front, and your willingness to put your money where your mouth is will make a point all by itself.
I’m pretty sure an expenditure of ZERO fits into any budget! Do it today!
Raising Income taxes even temporarily won’t work and will spook high earners to move their residency to PA. We should consider a 2.5% Sales tax.
Folks from PA will still come to DE to buy their TV’s…
What’s the point of even doing a ‘listening tour’ if he’s insisting on a ‘growth alone’ approach? That’s a rhetorical question.
It’s just like his town hall meetings with the Concord Coalition creeps where the question on the table was not whether Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid benefits needed to be slashed, but HOW to slash those benefits.
This boy ain’t right.
I’ve figured it out. He takes Prevagen. I think spinelessness is a side effect. Well, that information is out there:
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/jellyfish-memory-supplement-prevagen-hoax-ftc-says-n704886
If Carney really is set on cutting Medicaid and Medicare benefits, gutting the health insurance plans for state employees, not touching the upper income tax bracket, etc., maybe we can start a fundraising campaign to pay to bus liberal activists into his next town hall/budget reset meeting.
All along, there has been zero vision or planning from the campaign or the administration. He apparently did nothing to prepare for the election results. The cabinet nominees should have been announced the day after the election instead of waiting so long in some cases. The budget should have been unveiled jointly with Markell. He should have issued his decision on DEDO without tossing it off to a task force. We should be light years ahead of where we are now, and should know where he wants to take us as a state. Instead we have government by incrementalism. So disappointing.
@SW:
Your underlying premise here is that Carney wanted to be “just like Jack.” But Carney can’t be a Markell clone because Markell beat him eight years ago.
Of course, a prime reason Carney lost in 2008 is that he acted just like Ruth Ann, which was not a very good idea.
So we’ve got a governor who wants to be different but, just like eight years ago, still can’t figure out how.
Lots of money for top management, unneeded crony positions, fat contracts for cronies and the 1%.