Iowa’s Legislative Service Agency puts the state of Iowa’s budget surplus at $804.6 million. Immediately there is discussion on how to deal with it. Should we spend it on education? Should we spend it on Human Services? Should we spend it on ___________? It is an automatic default for some politicians to feel that we must spend any surplus that we have. If we have it we must spend.
May I remind our Legislature that it isn’t their money to spend. They don’t have money of their own, government is not a producer – they collect money involuntarily from their residents. They are merely stewards of what ever funding they do have.
So this isn’t a surplus – it is an ending balance. The state of Iowa over collected and that money should be returned to the taxpayers. A “surplus” isn’t a license to spend more money.