There’s an elephant in the room, but the Republican Party won’t acknowledge it.

                One would think an op-ed on the state budget would mention the impact of the Great Recession. 

                 Not the one in today’s Sun written by Larry Hogan, a Cabinet secretary in the Ehrlich administration.  Our deficit is all the fault of Martin O’Malley, he writes.

                 My committee had a briefing on the budget from our non-partisan fiscal staff this afternoon.

                 I asked about the impact of the national economy on state revenues.  They’ve been flat for the last three fiscal years.  In addition, safety net costs have risen – unemployment, welfare, and Medicaid.

                  The $680 million per year in additional revenue from the taxes we raised and slots we authorized at the special session in 2007 would have eliminated our structural deficit, according to our staff’s projections at the time. 

                  You can argue (and I don’t agree) that spending should be cut significantly or that high end taxpayers should not pay more, but at least acknowledge that we’re in the mess we’re in because the bubble burst on the national economy.