TRIMMING THE FAT
Every budget can use a little reduction — including higher education’s
BY GEORGE HARRIS

George Harris is publisher of Liberty Watch: The Magazine. He is also a political activist and successful Southern Nevadan businessman. Reach Harris at gopgeorge@embarqmail.com  Other stories by George Harris

Much to my critics’ profound disappointment, the title of this column has nothing do with my adoption of a weight-loss program. Often when we discern any fat whatsoever on our bodies, we tend to look critically at ourselves and — even if we don’t enact it — we at least formulate a plan to reduce unwanted mass. (Unless you’re a Democrat, in which case you attempt to pass legislation taxing or outlawing fatty foods, thereby putting burger flippers on the unemployment line.) 

Taking this into account, why is it that, when we know there’s extra padding in, say, the state budget, we refuse to even accept the need for change? We make changes in our own personal expenses. Why can’t the state?

Consider our own personal budgets at home. I’m sure, at least once or twice a year, in the raw aftermath of a particularly brutal power bill or a DMV license-renewal payment, we sit down at the kitchen table and, pen and paper (or laptop) in hand, itemize our monthly budget. From premium cable payments to semi-lavish dinner outings, there is often a range of unnecessary expenses that could be easily purged — if we only we had the discipline to make those cuts. 

I don’t know if it works this way for you, but I find that, when I identify unnecessary expenses and remove them from my budget, I have a little extra money in my account at month’s end. Money that I can spend on a sudden, badly needed necessity or (heaven forbid!) place into a savings account. The latter is an option that more people should keep in mind this holiday season.

So when Gov. Jim Gibbons asks the state to do some belt-tightening, why do the special interests and liberals get into a lather? Have they never attempted budget cuts at home? Maybe if they stopped renewing their never-ending subscriptions to The Nation, they might learn that asking the university to eliminate wasteful expenditures is not the end of the world.

While seniors, who must sacrifice month after month to purchase prescriptions, suffer the most from the state’s inability to cut costs, the worst Nevada senior of all, Chancellor Jim Rogers, tells us that the Nevada System of Higher Education can’t look around and find a way to remove 8 percent of its budget. It’s the usual scare tactics, of course. “If we enact these cuts, there will be construction delays of new buildings, part-time instructors will be laid off, and there will be a shortage of classrooms.” 

But why go that far? Why not simply excise any new semi-useless software programs for the foreseeable future, or simply 86 the whole “every assistant dean gets a taxpayer-funded Blackberry” routine? Or, I don’t know, do any of a hundred little things that will add up to an 8 percent reduction of costs?

What is Rogers’ solution? Instead of cutting the state’s budget, Rogers asks Gibbons to exhaust the state’s rainy day fund or (here it comes!) raise taxes. 

To his credit, Gibbons has refused to do either. He shouldn’t. To raise taxes even more is going to hurt the poor and senior citizens more than it will impact rich folks. 

Who feels it most when taxes are jacked in addition to rising energy prices? Grandma, that’s who. If college kids are worried about their tuition costs going up — which they’re not, hence the lack of any semblance of student protest — then they should put in a few paid hours at the local nursing home or assist the elderly this holiday season. They won’t be so gung-ho to add more taxes to people’s personal budgets like Rogers once they interact with the most vulnerable people in society.