Jul 9, 2010 By Herald Standard Staff 1 min read

State’s budget problems difficult Be wary of politicians who say eliminating waste, fraud and abuse would go a long way toward solving the state’s budget woes.

To start with, the relatively easy and medium-sized cuts have been made, and those that do remain are insignificant in terms of real budget numbers. Further cuts no doubt would be very painful for many of the state’s residents.

Likewise, the fraud and abuse that politicians love to claim exists – and some does – is so insignificant in terms of dollars and cents as to be irrelevant to overall budget numbers.

Here’s an example of the situation. By this time next year, the four party caucuses in the General Assembly could be sitting on surpluses of up to $200 million.

While it’s certainly worth considering if the caucuses really need that much of taxpayer money to fund their operations, eliminating the surpluses would barely dent the $5 billion budget gap that Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is predicting.

Keep this in mind whenever candidates blather about waste, fraud and abuse.

Their rhetoric does not reflect reality.

Beaver County Times