Blue Mass Group

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Yup, that’s budget wonk Baker off by $5 billion

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In a recent interview with Fox25, Charlie Baker makes the unbelievable claim that Mitt Romney left office with a massive $5 billion surplus – which he asserts was then squandered by the Patrick Administration.

Like Brett Favre deep in the playoffs, Baker recklessly chucks it out there, praying that no one from the opposing team picks apart his figures. Fox gives Baker a total pass, and he almost gets away with his Hail Mary scott free on a Friday.

Fortunately for truth-seekers everywhere, the Globe's Adrian Walker challenges Baker's claim and cries foul on his “cooked up” figure. Even the conservative Mass Taxpayers Foundation is baffled by Baker and points out that there was actually no surplus after Romney left.

Yup, that's budget wonk Charlie Baker off by a whopping $5 Billion. Baker is running for governor on a platform of being honest about the budget but his  budget history wouldn't last five minutes on Wikipedia.

I guess Baker won't be running his campaign on honesty after all. Any guess what his next focus might be? Preventing climate change?

 

 

 

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  1. From the Globe:

    <

    p>Baker basically said he had misspoken. He meant to call it a “budget fund balance” and claimed the difference is essentially one of semantics.

    <

    p>”I tried to come up with a term that a Joe Q. Citizen could recognize,” he said. “I may have called it a surplus yesterday. I didn’t call it a surplus today.”

    Columnist Adrian Walker counters:

    The problem is, they aren’t the same thing. A surplus is what it sounds like, the amount of money left over after the operating budget is accounted for.

    • First, Charlie Baker mis-spoke, by his own admission (in Adrian Walker’s piece) (emphasis mine):

      When I reached him yesterday, Baker basically said he had misspoken. He meant to call it a “budget fund balance” and claimed the difference is essentially one of semantics.

      “I tried to come up with a term that a Joe Q. Citizen could recognize,” he said. “I may have called it a surplus yesterday. I didn’t call it a surplus today.”

      <

      p>There’s a nicely-nuanced euphemism for “I bank on voter ignorance.” He used the word “surplus” (which, like “profit”, most voters correctly understand to mean a dynamic measure of the excess of income over expenditures for a given period) to describe the year-end balance of state funds.

      <

      p>Kind of like somebody who has retirement funds and college accounts worth $500K, a net income of $50K, and net expenses of $100K telling their spouse that “Honey, we made $500K this year.”

      <

      p>In other words, he lied.

  2. Following Republican politicians in our state, one would think running a surplus was immoral because it meant that the state was taxing more than it needed.

    <

    p>So not only did Romney not leave a surplus; I think he would have found it horrifying to have done so.

    • He’s trying to keep that “independent” label by being all things to all people.  He can’t do it forever.

      <

      p>In the mean time, if his drill-baby-drill rhetoric is met with equal amounts higher-CAFE-standards rhetoric, renewable-energy-encouragement rhetoric, and some reduce-consumption-with-efficiency rhetoric, he’ll be 50% ahead of most of the GOP.

      • Worked for Scott Brown. But then again, Brown had a four month (let’s face it, really one month) time frame to duck duck duck GOOSE! and also, did not have to face an actual candidate in the race, nevermind at least two of them, challenging him to stop being vague.

        • I spaced on Baker v. Brown.  My mistake.  My comments were about Scott Brown, and by “forever” I meant “until 2012”.

          <

          p>I’m sure it won’t be the first time I flip flop those two in my mind.  Sorry.

  5. Baker’s claim that he merely misspoke and meant his figure to refer to a “budget fund balance” that included, among other things, the Rainy Day fund is another palpable lie. If you look at his words on Fox, below, notice how Baker speaks of the 2.5 billion dollars Rainy Day fund as a something separate from and in addition to the mythical five billion dollar surplus.

    <

    p>Baker on Fox: “When I left state government, Gene, we had a three billion dollar surplus and a billion dollars in the rainy day fund. And that was eleven years ago, back when a billion dollars was real money. When Mitt Romney left office, we had a five billion dollar budget surplus and a two and a half billion dollar rainy day fund.  And in twenty four months, Tim Murray and Deval Patrick managed to spend nearly all of it, and I think he’s the last guy who should be lecturing me about fiscal discipline.” http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp…

  6. Every time I’ve ever seen Michael Widmer quoted in the news, it’s fairly non-partisan stuff. Maybe you’re confusing them with Citizens for Limited Taxation.

    • Citizens for Limited Taxation is not only partisan, they’re teabaggers.  They’ve got to to be the ones he had in mind.

      <

      p>

      A libertarian like me, for whom liberty is the highest value, will vote for Scott Brown on Tuesday because he is our best chance to turn around the country before we lose our beloved freedom. Scott is a strong fiscal conservative, with a 100% CLT rating this past year, but he has never claimed to be a libertarian; however, “fiscal conservative” is good enough for this election, which will inspire fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and tea party activists across the country to run and take the country back. Scott winning is just the beginning of Revolution 2010..

      — Barbara Anderson

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