New Mexico’s suffering from austerity, huh?

I don’t read Joe Monahan’s blog (unless someone directly tells me to) so I just ran across his not-so-thinly-veiled attack today on yours truly and the Rio Grande Foundation. Monahan claims that New Mexico is suffering from “austerity” as advocated by the Rio Grande Foundation (technically, he refuses to mention us and instead calls us a “right wing think tank”).

For starters, New Mexico’s spending has grown in real terms under Gov. Martinez. According to the LFC, Martinez’ first General Fund budget was $5.43 billion and it is now $6.16 billion. That averages out to about 3.58 percent growth on an annual basis. Given low statistically-low inflation rates and New Mexico’s barely-there population growth, New Mexico’s budget has grown every year (on average) under Martinez.

Monahan moves on to attack our advocacy and research on a right to work law for New Mexico, but rather than doing so, he makes the bizarre claim: “Remember, a couple of years ago when the mantra was cutting corporate taxes and economic paradise would result?” No, I don’t remember that. RGF detailed the benefits of previous, not-enacted bill reducing corporate income tax rates, but we were never asked to testify on the bill that passed with its potential tax hikes and expansion of the film program . More importantly, Martinez’ small corporate income tax cuts are not even half-implemented yet.

What Monahan and his ilk refuse to acknowledge is that states that have right to work laws consistently outperform non-right to work states. The most recent data available show 8 of the 10 fastest-growing states have such laws on the books.