Gronstal’s Budget Fantasy

On Wednesday January 7th the leadership of the Iowa General Assembly met with the Editorial Board of the Des Moines Register. Among the topics discussed was the impending budget deficit. In the course of the questioning Senate Minority Leader, Democrat Mike Gronstal declared that there was no deficit. When it was pointed out that State Auditor Dave Vaudt is warning about a large budget deficit Gronstal seems to get even more agitated. Gronstal proceeded to say that Vaudt was wrong and that there was no budget for 2010 yet. You can catch the video of the discussion here.

After watching the video I decided to poke around on the Iowa General Assembly website. I didn’t have to poke long. On the first page of the website there is a link to “Analysis of FY 2010 Budget and Department Requests”. Since the Register discussion took place three days ago I thought that this document could have been placed there in the last few days. From what I learned the document was produced specifically for members of the Iowa General Assembly in December of 2008. So this document has been available for about a month prior to discussion. In the body of the document, page 15 to be exact, it discusses the FY 2010 Budget and the projected budget deficit. The amount that the budget is projected to be short is in excess of $700 million. This number is on par with the numbers that the State Auditor has been projecting for FY 2010.

Senator Gronstal is the only person that I have heard say that there is no budget deficit. He contradicts not only the State Auditor, a man whose job it is to know the states money, but also members of his own party. With his claim at the Register last Wednesday one has to wonder if he has spent the last few months in a fantasy world because he sure hasn’t spent it in reality.