About that so-called $3 billion budget deficit Nevada is supposedly facing. We’re not. It’s nowhere near that number. As Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston noted in Thursday’s paper, “State experts predict the budget to come in $3 billion short of current spending requests (my emphasis).
Not current spending. Current spending requests. In other words, projected revenue for the next budget cycle is $3 billion less than what the bureaucrats WANT to spend; not what they’re spending right now.
Indeed, as another Sun story on the same day noted, “To maintain current levels of services, state agencies have requested $8.3 billion, according to the state budget office.” Which is as outrageous as it is absurd.
We’re running the government presently on about $6.3 billion. Yet our government bureaucrats are claiming that to “maintain current levels of services” it’ll cost $2 billion more? Which is $3 billion over and above what Nevada is expected to take in? Are these people on crack?