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By Greg Bell
Senate Majority Assistant Whip

A college student wrote to ask me for her class assignment what the most pressing issue facing our society. I decided not to speak to moral issues but said the following:

The most pressing governmental policy issue is the expansion of the federal government into areas I believe are unconstitutional. And whether or not these actions are unconstitutional, the funding for the federal government's programs and bail-out packages is unsustainable. The government has shouldered staggering debt to finance programs and the bail-outs. The massive expenditure of funds in the bail-out/stimulus packages will, by almost everyone's admission, cause serious inflation. Moreover, taxes will have to be increased, jobs and company expansions will be curtailed with higher taxes, and more and more people will become dependent on the federal government for income, health care and food.

The taxpaying sector of our economy is shrinking as the entitlement programs expand. We will reach a breaking point unless we retrench. Even if we ratchet back federal expenditures, it will take years of surpluses to repay the debt created in the last year. I don't know if the federal government can continue to borrow the money in the bond market which it will need to fund the spending required by its programs and to carry the trillions of dollars of ongoing national debt. If foreign countries like China should cease buying our bonds (for 0% yield) simply as a safe harbor for their capital and to keep the giant US economy going so that we will buy its consumer products, our country will become insolvent.

Generally, I will say that we can no longer afford all the government we are getting.

At the state level many of our sister states have not acted prudently. California and New York are glaring examples of state governments that have taxed heavily to provide many social benefits and aggressive government programs. Utah has sometimes been looked down on as a state that didn't provide the level of benefits of these other more "progressive" states. However, in this downturn we see that states like NY and CA simply cannot sustain the revenue needed to pay the very high-cost public programs. They are raising taxes and consequently losing companies and jobs and people. By contrast, this week Utah was named the most competitive business state in the nation because of our stable, low-tax, business-friendly environment. See the report here.

Utah has balanced its budget, kept taxes low and lived within its means. Yes, we do not fund education and higher education at levels thought of as normal in other states. But we have not had the number of high income jobs necessary to finance such tax revenues. So we will do our best with what we have and continue to attract businesses from other highly-taxed, highly-regulated states. And we will continue to do more with less as we always have.

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