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sey, Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, and George Deukmejian of

California allowed state expenditures to double and more in

the span of a decade.  The rapid rise in salaries, corporate

profits, and consumer spending created tax windfalls for

states in those years.  When the recession finally hit in

19906 spendthrift states faced unprecedented levels of red

,

ink.

This is precisely the situation in many states in the

current economic expansion.  In 1997 the states ended the

fiscal year with about $21 billion more in tax collections

than they had anticipated.  It appears that7 there will be a

sizable revenue windfall this year as well.

In state capitals from Trenton to Sacramento, those

surpluses have provided an irresistible temptation to spend.

Pataki's eulogy for big government liberalism in New York

was at best premature.  In fact, only months after deliver-

ing that speech, Pataki endorsed a $1.5 billion "infrastruc-

ture bond act," and this year he served up to the state leg-

islature a budget calling for $5 billion in new spending, a

9 percent increase.  Pataki's first two budgets in 1995 and

1996 called for zero growth in spending.  (His "sophomore

slump" drops him from an A to a B on this year's report

card.)  Meanwhile, across the river in New Jersey, Whitman

endorsed a 6 percent budget hike, including a $600 million

boost in education spending.  On the West Coast, Califor-

nia's budget grew 8 percent in fiscal year 1998, and for

1999 outgoing Governor Wilson proposed another 8 percent in-

crease, including more than $1 billion in extra education

spending.

In an era of almost no inflation, state budgets grew by

8

5 percent in FY97 and more than 6 percent in FY98.

Noting

that apparent return to profligacy, a recent Wall Street

Journal headline read, "For Republican Governors, Spending

9

Isn't a Dirty Word Anymore."

Tommy Thompson recently de-

clared all too truthfully that "you see a new breed of ac-

tivism among us [Republican governors]."  Voinovich adds

that "we recognize there are problems to be solved and that

there is a role for government to play."  In recent years

states have dramatically increased spending on Clintonesque

priorities such as expanded government programs for child

care, health care, education, and the environment.