Investing in the Future

Confronting near-term budget challenges, state and local governments are under tremendous pressure to focus on immediate needs at the expense of long-term investments. While these difficult economic times have also caused significant budget pressures at the national level, the federal government is able to spread out the impact of these pressures by running a deficit—a burden for the future obvious to all in the level of public debt. State and local governments, on the other hand, are generally required to balance their budgets every year. The legacy left by their budget troubles is less evident, but no less significant, and can be measured by delayed capital projects, cuts in education, and other deferred spending in investments with long-run payoffs—forgone investment that places our children’s standard of living at risk.
Read more