Congress risks opening budget-swallowing sinkhole

Now Congress decides to develop a conscience.

Battered by election-year debate over out-of-control federal spending, D.C. lawmakers are trying to look fiscally prudent by canceling plans for $23 billion in state aid.

Their supposed show of resolve is cursed by bad timing and bad aim.

More than 30 states had counted on that money to help balance budgets, many that begin July 1. The president and both chambers of Congress had signaled the money would be there.

Then last week, the House stripped the aid – which flows to states in the form of bigger Medicaid matches – from its jobs bill. The Senate could follow as early as next week.

If that happens, Congress would indeed be putting its foot down – right on top of states’ ability to shelter social services and higher education from even more draconian cuts.

Pennsylvania, for example, anticipates having to eliminate all state support for substance abuse and homelessness programs, cutting one-quarter of child welfare spending and halving funding for domestic violence prevention if Congress doesn’t come through.

Washington state would face a similar scenario, although the details might be different.

Here, state lawmakers built a budget that relied on receiving $480 million in extra Medicaid money. It was a gamble, the kind lawmakers are usually wise to resist. But the odds looked good and the alternatives grim.

Finding that much money elsewhere in the state budget would have required drastic sacrifices. Eliminating the entire Basic Health plan that offers medical coverage to the working poor would have gotten the Legislature only a third of the way there.

What else would have to be weakened? Protection of abused children? Incarceration of dangerous felons?

Gov. Chris Gregoire hedged the $480 million bet by asking lawmakers to leave the money in reserve. The Legislature set aside all but $30 million of it.

Now, if the federal money doesn’t come through, state government would risk operating without a net, one missed revenue projection or big unanticipated expense away from the budgetary brink.

That’s an untenable position, one that would compel state lawmakers to make additional cuts just months after extracting some $700 million from state programs and months before a session in which they’ll have to stare down another $2 billion shortfall.

All so that federal politicians facing re-election can save face. The federal government absolutely needs to rein in spending, but the idea that eliminating temporary aid to struggling states will have any effect is a joke.

The real threat to the nation’s fiscal health is the long-term budget gap created by ongoing entitlement spending. The lifeline promised states would widen that gap less than 1 percent.

Pulling the rug out from under states would be a mere token gesture of frugality – but there would be nothing token about the pain it would inflict on vulnerable people protected by social services.