Belt Cannot Be Tightened---Traded Belt For Sandwich

The economic news from New York has been as brutal and relentless as the Giants' pass rush in the Super Bowl. Once again, New England is scrambling and taking too many hits.

The Wall Street meltdown forced the Commonwealth to revise and reduce its revenue estimates for the upcoming year, leaving Gov. Deval Patrick with a roughly 1.4 billion dollar budget deficit. His plan (in full PDF glory here--Globe summary here) will fire about a thousand state employees and cut about one billion dollars (a little under 4%) from the state's annual budget, while bringing in 200 million in new revenues and taking another 200 million from the state's 1.8 billion dollar emergency reserves.

The Mass GOP took the opportunity to complain that we shouldn't be spending so much in the first place. Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei told the Globe: "Every Republican member of the Legislature voted against the budget that was passed last July... Clearly, the situation we find ourselves in today has been made much more severe by the Patrick administration's refusal to heed the warnings of fiscal watchdogs." Indeed, if you thought education and social services were overfunded and you were getting woozy from the furious speed of service from government agencies, you're going to love these cuts.

Patrick is a progressive politician who needs money to do the things that inspired his career in the first place, but he doesn't have the federal luxury of racking up charges now on credit with the hope of paying it down sometime in the future. But at least we still have Tom Brady to guide us. At least the Sox are winning. At least we can drown our sorrows at the casinos. At least we have our health. Until hospitals get mad about that $293 million we're going to be taking back.