Making cuts is hard

by Doron Taussig

Published Dec. 22, 2011, 9:57 a.m. ET

The Pennsylvania Independent reports that the Corbett administration is considering layoffs of several hundred state police to help deal with Pennsylvania's big new deficit. The administration won't confirm the plan, but the police union says it's been given notice.

People who support big government cuts often suggest that those cuts should be easy to make, because, they believe, the government is so bloated. But the fact that the law-and-order friendly Corbett administration is turning to police layoffs to deal with a deficit suggests that cuts are not easy to make at all.

That doesn't mean there's no fat to trim. But it does mean that the fat is hard to find and isolate in cuts. Otherwise, you wouldn't hear quotes like this from Budget Secretary Charles Zogby:

"We need to bring the public safety budget in line to what Pennsylvania can afford."