Right and Wrong

Isaac Smith is both right and wrong at the same time:

It's good that the special session didn't collapse, but I frankly would not have been surprised if it had. There was an unbelievable amount of things the General Assembly had to deal with -- not just the budget, but also Medicaid, Chesapeake Bay cleanup, a transportation package, etc. It was simply a lot, even too much, for a legislature to handle in the space of three weeks. As a result, the process was ugly, even by saugage(sic)-making standards.

He is right that the process was ugly, and he is right that there was too much on the docket for a three week span.

But, and we have been over this before, there was nothing that the General Assembly had to deal with. The Democrats decided that this would be a good time to raise everyone's taxes. But this is not a Special Session that had to be called because of an actual emergency. It was called because Governor O'Malley does not have the political willpower introduce a fiscally mature and responsible budget. The Governor's lack of understanding of basic economic principles, mainly that you don't spend more money than you have, was the reason for the session. Had the Governor taken the time now to realize this, he could have saved us the time and the trouble by merely cutting back on the many wasteful and unnecessary government programs he and the interest groups who love him cherish. How hard is that?

But it's a sheer fallacy to say that something had to be done. Governor O'Malley decided to call a Special Session because he figured now was the time to try to impoverish Maryland's working and middle classes by taxing them back to the Stone Age, and the legislative Democrats let him get away with it.