STATES' (LAST) RITES. As is well known, our formerly solvent nation is running a record $374.2 billion deficit -- in contrast to the $230 billion surplus Clinton left us with in 2000.

But the states aren't doing much better. Not that they're getting less money from the Feds: While in 1998 the Census Bureau reported $25.3 billion in "federal government grants and other payments" to U.S. state governments ($29.8 billion went to California), in 2002 that rose to $36.2 billion for the states (and $41.6 billion to California.)

Yet state budgets are still a mess. Conservatives like to leave California as the only visible object-lesson of state spending run amok, as it had been piloted by a hapless Democrat before the telegenic Wolfcastle putsch. But Republican governors like Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and John Rowland of Connecticut are asking for tax increases to bail their asses out, reports the Christian Science Monitor, which also says we're currently seeing the "Deepest State Deficits in 50 Years."

The problem, says CSM, "is that tax revenues are way down and costs are exploding, particularly in healthcare, which represents 30 percent of state budgets." This has led to some heartwarming scenes, such as this one reported by AP:

Linda Garner of Columbus wrote [Georgia Governor Sonny] Perdue recently after the state terminated her quadriplegic daughter's benefits when she turned 21. The daughter, Melissa, was struck by a drunk driver when she was 6, and relies on a ventilator.

Perdue's reply to her was sympathetic but, after carefully explaining the state's budget difficulties, it offered her no help.

Costs are going up and revenues are going down, but no one wants to look like a tax-and-spend liberal so people get screwed. And until things gets to the Huckabee-Rowland stage, games are played to try and hide the damage for one more season. From a hilarious story in the Applebee (WI) Post-Crescent, optimistically titled "State Tax Burden Down in 2003":

The study found Wisconsin’s total tax burden was 33 percent of personal income in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2003. That’s down from 33.7 percent in 2002, 34.4 percent in 2001 and 37.4 percent in 2000.
The total tax burden is a combination of all federal, state and local taxes Wisconsin residents and businesses pay.
“That’s encouraging,” Wood County Supv. Donna Rozar said. Her county decreased its property tax levy 12.3 percent this past year, but offset about 50 percent of that loss with a half-percent county sales tax, she said. [italics mine]
“I think we’re an overtaxed people,” she said.

Total taxes down 0.7 percent! Happy days are here again! And you have to love the property tax-sales tax shuffle.

Clearly this country is, at every level, financially fucked. Yet no one from the President down to the lowliest Town Supervisor wants to face up to our impending bankruptcy. For one thing, they have jerks like this saying that the states are only suffering now because they "went on a spending binge in the 1990s," presumably on such frills as ventilators for crippled teenagers. For another, they have voters howling for reform on the cheap.

So the various government agents, excepting those who have yet to run out of bullshit, juggle and fumble like bankrupt housekeepers, hiding the credit card bills and turn-off notices from the spouse and kids, hoping to get through one more day.

Meanwhile, half a world away, we teach democracy.