No Surprises

It was bound to come to this. It always does. Instead of responsibly cutting spending in order to protect what spending is necessary, the State of Maryland is going back to the well:

Getting to work on a big budget gap, House subcommittees voted to cut $102 million in local highway money on Thursday, but they kept an in-state tuition freeze intact for the fourth consecutive year and spared $13.4 million for stem cell research.

The revision to the state's highway user revenue cost share is one of the biggest cuts made by four appropriation subcommittees in the House of Delegates.

The cuts recommended by the subcommittees go beyond the $516 million shortfall in the fiscal year 2010 budget, with an eye toward leaving a buffer in case the economy worsens.

The fact of the matter is that whenever Maryland's Democrats need to put something on the chopping block, it always winds up that aid for transportation is the first thing to go. No, we can't cut unnecessary services. No, we can't cut the size of government. No, we have to go after one of the few things that all Marylanders are directly impact by, the transportation infrastructure.

Remember when President Bush was blamed for our nation's crumbling infrastructure? Yeah, me neither.

Now this is a relatively insignificant (if you can call it as such) amount of money given the fact that the Democrats have backed us into a $1.5 billion hole. But why oh why do Democrats always attack our infrastructure first?