I wish my raises were 8%

The state of Ohio is in a budget mess again.

Excerpt

The high figure represents 3.6 percent of the state's two-year, $52.3 billion budget that began in July and goes through June 2009.

In 1982-83, there was a $534 million deficit on a $6.7 billion budget - an 8 percent gap that was plugged with a hefty income tax increase. Other considerable deficits have happened roughly every decade since, with budget gaps just before and after the 2001 terror attacks comparable to current predictions.

I did some calculations on my trusty Excel spreadsheet and it looks to me like the state's budgets have increased about 8% per year.

This leads me to some questions.

1) How is it that the average joe can make it on 2-4% annual increases and the state cannot?

2) What programs do we have today that we didn't have in 1982? Are those programs necessary? After all, we did make it as a state pretty well from 1803 - 1982 without these programs?

3) The article mentions tapping into the "rainy day fund". Why does it seem like it's always raining at the statehouse?

The new state motto "Ohio..... The heart of it all... granted it's a solid purple heart getting bluer each day".