Economic pain lesson in waiting

In the increasingly uncomfortable realm occupied by President Barack Obama, the deepening of the economic malaise has abated, and the great plunge over the precipice has been averted. In another place, where the rest of the country dwells, the feeling of breathless freefall persists. It would be pleasanter to believe Obama, but a constricting economy’s grip around the country’s throat suffocates credulity. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and state lawmakers sense this acutely.

Having swung axes at the state budget until their arms have wearied to rubber, Virginia’s elected officials, starting with the governor, have awakened to find that $1.5 billion more in cuts still must be made. This pushes Democrats and Republicans alike to the kind of bipartisanship only crisis brings. Budgetary third rails such as education not only will be touched but seized and shaken. “There are going to be some hard feelings,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles J. Colgan, D-Prince William, acknowledged to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

States lack the luxury afforded Obama and his pals inside the Beltway. They cannot conjure images of a burgeoning recovery while dwindling revenues siphon money from a budget the law insists must be balanced. A Democrat puts it plainly. “There’s a constituency for everything,” Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw said. “But unlike Washington, we ain’t got a printing press.” Indeed.

Obama flees reality as though it were a toxin. The victory he declares is that the country has not barrelled into depression in his first six months in office. The presumption that extends from this is that a recovery is next. This is wishful and telling, akin to slamming into the pavement from the top of a skyscraper and then proclaiming the worst is over. It might be, but look at the blood.

Further, there’s nothing to indicate that what Obama says is true. His staff hailed the unemployment rate’s slip from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent. But the economy still lost almost 250,000 more jobs last month. Unemployment’s a tricky figure and frequently a misleading one. When benefits run dry and people give up hope of finding work, they no longer are included in unemployment data, though their work status is unchanged. A second caveat: The economy under FDR appeared to halt its collapse then staggered into depression. History suggests the worst might yet come.

Saslaw points to the most significant obstacle to Obama and modern federal government’s view of these realities: the absence of a balanced budget requirement and the proclivity to print more money when the people and subsequently the government have less of it. Suggesting an end of deficit spending would stir apoplexy in the new power structure, though many so-called Blue Dog Democrats support the concept. Obama’s excesses are a reminder of how important such a move is.

Virginia shows that a balanced budget alone is not a panacea, despite its medicinal effects. The state steadily increased spending in the years leading to the deepest recession in a half-century. Strong revenues and increased taxes fed the trend. Now officials are whittling flesh and bone rather than simply trimming fat.

Sixteenth-century English poet John Heywood waxed eloquent on the virtues of calling “troubles experiences.” Doing this for our government would mean in Washington, passing a balanced budget amendment to provide the restraint elected officials cannot provide for themselves, and both there and in Richmond, spending not only within means but within reason.

If these lessons go unlearned, the recession’s pain whether it wanes or is prolonged, will have been in vain.