According to state budget officials the cuts Tennessee will have to make will likely be permanent

“I really think you need to expect and can treat these $1 billion to $1.1 billion in base reductions … as permanent,” said Jim White, executive director of the legislature’s Fiscal Review Committee, told House leaders on Thursday. “State government is going to be smaller and different after we complete this budget year.”

Of course, if government spending had not grown absurdly to begin with, this story wouldn’t even be a story. In light of this good news, former House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh calls for …  revenue enhancement?

“No one has got the backbone or the guts to talk about revenue enhancement,” Rep. Naifeh complained. “That’s what we need to at least explore.”

House Budget Subcommittee Chairman Harry Tindell, D-Knoxville, said the meeting’s purpose “is not to pave the way for such action. It is to educate and inform members.”

Rep. Williams said “our whole country is in a deep recession. I don’t feel this is the time to try to increase our revenues with any type of higher taxes.”

Raising taxes takes backbone? Au contraire, tax increases are the first refuge of the creatively deficient.