Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Democrats and Republicans in the state capitol have drawn a line in the sand this summer over whether Gov. Chet Culver should call a special session of the legislature to balance Iowa’s budget, and the debate shows no signs of quieting down.
The Iowa Constitution requires the state to balance its budget at the end of every fiscal year, and the governor can only transfer so much money out of the state’s cash reserves without approval from the legislature.
It remains unclear how large the budget deficit from fiscal year 2009 will be when the final numbers are available in September, but there is a chance that it will be too large for Culver to cover it with transfers on his own. That’s why some are predicting that he will have to call a special session, but so far, the governor has insisted that it will not be necessary.
Republicans, who are quick to accuse Democrats of spending recklessly, are clamoring for a triumphant, unscheduled return to the capitol this summer. Hoping that a special session would draw more attention to their attacks, GOP leaders have attempted to frame the debate so that if a special session becomes necessary, it will look like a Democratic admission of guilt. Culver’s emphatic resistance only serves to reinforce that perception.
Lost in the hyperbolic spin coming out of both sides in this debate is one simple fact: the budget shortfall is really neither party’s fault.
The nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency projected much higher revenue through the end of fiscal year 2009 than what the state ended up receiving. Democrats fulfilled their responsibilities in this year’s session by passing a budget that fit within official, nonpartisan estimates. That’s what they were supposed to do. At the time, the alternative would have been to assume that the experts’ revenue estimates were wrong and to make deeper cuts to state services than what might have been necessary.
That would have meant laying off state employees, closing courthouses for even more days, covering health care for fewer children, or even raising taxes. Those are things legislators should only do when they are absolutely necessary, and at the time, the numbers said they weren’t.
Bad budget estimates happen no matter which party holds the pursestrings. When former Gov. Tom Vilsack called a special session to balance the state’s budget in 2002, it had already received a stamp of approval from Republicans, who controlled the legislature.
Many of the Republicans now attacking Culver over this year’s budget were instrumental in passing the faulty budgets for fiscal years 2001 and 2002. I can only assume their press releases from back then were a little less vitriolic.
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