MONTPELIER’S $9 BILLION INSULT

How Vermont Built a Government for a State Twice Its Size — Without Bothering to Find the People

There comes a point when government extravagance ceases to be merely foolish and becomes insulting.

Vermont has reached it.

Across the Connecticut River sits New Hampshire, with roughly 1.4 million residents — more than twice Vermont’s population of about 650,000. It has cities Vermont does not have, more highways, more commerce and considerably more people requiring government services.

Yet Vermont has constructed a state budget approaching $9 billion.

That should make every Vermont taxpayer furious.

Instead, Montpelier treats each bloated budget as an accomplishment. Another billion disappears into the governmental maw and politicians congratulate themselves for their “historic investments.” Bureaucracies expand. Consultants prosper. Agencies discover new missions. Nonprofits line up at the trough. And taxpayers are informed that still more money is necessary to solve problems the last mountain of money somehow failed to solve.

This isn’t compassion. It is institutional gluttony.

New Hampshire manages to survive without a general sales tax or broad-based individual income tax. Vermont taxes income, purchases, property, rooms, meals, fuel and practically anything else that moves slowly enough for Montpelier to catch it.

And what magnificent bounty has this purchased?

Vermonters are rewarded with crushing property taxes, declining school enrollment, housing shortages, struggling downtowns, an aging population and young families wondering whether they can afford to remain here.

Then comes the most infuriating part: the people responsible prescribe more government.

Only in Montpelier could failure become the justification for expanding the institution that produced it.

There was once something recognizably Vermont about thrift, self-reliance and suspicion of unnecessary government. Calvin Coolidge understood that public money belonged to somebody — the fellow who earned it.

That Vermont seems increasingly quaint.

Today’s governing philosophy resembles an enormous dinner party where taxpayers receive the check but weren’t invited to order.

The comparison with New Hampshire ought to embarrass Montpelier. Instead, the political class whistles past it.

Two neighboring states. Similar geography. Similar heritage.

One has more than twice the people.

The other has apparently decided that what it lacks in population, it can make up for in government.

Vermonters shouldn’t merely question that.

They should be damned angry about it.