The proper focus of budget discussions

By The Daily Herald Editorial Board

How can we argue with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin that the research done at Fermilab and Argonne Laboratories is critical both to the suburbs and to the nation? Durbin complained that $2 billion in GOP-proposed cuts to scientific research would be “devastating” to the DuPage County institutions. They would cost as many as 1,450 jobs and set back much-needed development of technologies in a global environment growing ever more competitive.

“Countries which a few decades ago we would never have identified as our competitors, are (now) our major competitors,” Durbin said during a visit to DuPage County Monday.

He couldn’t be more right — as far as that goes. But his defense of the scientific labs raises a larger and much more difficult question, a question that taxpayers and lawmakers at all levels must find some way to come to grips with. If Argonne and Fermilab can’t be cut, what can?

Elsewhere on this page, no less than small-government conservative George Will frets that pending cuts in Teach for America will weaken a respected government-funded program boosting education opportunities for America’s poor. He dismisses the $21 million in cuts facing the program as “a rounding error in the General Motors bailout.”

Twenty-one million dollars, a rounding error? This from a persistent critic of government spending and one of the nation’s most outspoken doubters of the government’s will to manage its expenses.

To be sure, a tremendous case can be made for Teach for America. At least an equally strong case can be made for Fermilab and Argonne. And for Medicare. And for Social Security. And for food stamps and the space program and the latest piece of military ingenuity.

And that mentality is what has put us where we are today. Every government program has a legitimate constituency. But every program also has its Bridge to Nowhere or its surprise-to-everyone $40 million Chicago State University grant.

Considering the existing financial crisis and the looming disaster, it is counterproductive for leaders — elected or otherwise — to be wandering through the electorate identifying the sacred cows that cannot be touched by the coming spending reality checks. But unless we all start thinking differently, that is surely what is going to happen as cuts reach into the many crevices of scientific, artistic, social and other government spending.

This is not to say that some rare spending area may prove to be so invaluable as to be sacrosanct, but there is serious danger in creating a list of untouchable areas and constantly adding to it. Eventually, we will find ourselves — much as Gov. Quinn does in his current budget proposal — with an armload of valuable expenses and a half-empty wallet from which to pay for them.