Mean Mitt (he’s a Republican, it’s a given, right?) is getting grief for keeping the legislature from spending beyond its means. You can read about it in the Boston Herald today (and the Globe yesterday, and…).
Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Massachusetts governor tells NRO: “No one is going to be left homeless by these spending reductions, and no one is going to die, as the advocates would have us all believe. The reaction to the cuts is out of proportion to what is actually occurring. The cuts made by Governor Romney amount to 1.7 percent of the $25.7 billion budget. Many of the cuts target legislative earmarks, some of which are just pure pork and all of which bypassed the normal administrative process for awarding state funds. Even after the cuts, despite all the predictions of doom, state spending will grow by more than 5 percent.”
Seems to me like a good last go at trying to keep state spending conservative. Considering the conservative (go ahead, you try to fill the statehouse with Boston conservatives) is about to leave, it’s not a bad message to go out with.