Saturday, November 21, 2009

Jiggery--pokery

The bloom is off the rose when it comes to the Saskatchewan Party and the provincial budget-- and they are being called on it. The Star Phoenix editorial says:
...Although the minister argued he has been able to keep Saskatchewan's books in the black, it was only due to such jiggery-pokery as tapping into the questionable Growth and Financial Security Fund and using one-time revenue of $275 million from the sale of the Crown's share of Saskferco.
. . . . relying on [resource] revenues to fund operating expenses isn't a sustainable long-term strategy.
Worse still is for the government to be spending projected revenues from volatile resource sales before it actually has the money in the bank.
Murray Mandrky blasts them:
What was most disturbing about Thursday's mid-year Saskatchewan budget update wasn't the bungled $1.8-billion miscalculation of potash revenue, nor was it necessarily the throw-caution-to-the-wind decision to wager the equivalent of 20 per cent of our annual spending on a volatile resource at its apex and likely to face some level of decline
It wasn't the startlingly unwise decision to spend the one-time sale of Saskferco assets to cover off the day-to-day operations of a government, nor was it the lack of anything vaguely resembling an austerity plan to deal with what might be another year of decline.
. . . What was truly most disturbing was the complete and total lack of humility we saw from this Saskatchewan Party government, which should damn well be embarrassed by its own incompetence right now . . . What is it about running government that you don't understand?
People are angry and it's going to get nothing but worse for Brad and the boys. And I'll bet at least a few of them are thinking about that dropped lawsuit right about now.

No comments: