I’m paraphrasing from Laura Leslie’s interview Wednesday with Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand. They discussed Rand’s bill to cut off funding for legislative pay after a set number of days in a legislative session. (You’ll find it near the end of this post, which offers some other interesting budget news.)
Leslie: But you’re not talking about setting a closing date. You’re talking about cutting off per diems [daily pay], right?
Rand: They tend to be … [chuckle] … They tend to co-exist pretty well.
When Leslie asked how lawmakers would meet new deadlines, given their track record of extending budget negotitations past July 1 almost every year, Rand responded:
We don’t have a deadline. We have a beginning of a fiscal year, but it’s not a deadline. As you know, we’ve had deadlines set by courts. We’ve had deadlines set by this, deadlines set by that. We always meet those deadlines because they’re real deadlines. The fiscal year is a bookkeeping entry, and it’s very little trouble for us to pass a continuing resolution, as you well know, and the world sails right along. But when you cut the money off, the sails will come down, and the sails will no longer sail.?
This is one case in which I do not feel compelled to offer this response. (But it was fun to hear it again anyway.)
