The Connecticut legislature cooks the books and presents a bogus budget to the public, while putting the state further into hock. Fat cats, employee featherbedding, unrealistic employment benefits and excessive staffing result.

Why? Legislators are not doing their job, which is simply to exercise due diligence at every step of the budgeting process. Quality has thus been sacrificed for the sake of expediency.

Governor Malloy's platform included Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which prohibits gimmicks to balance the state's budget. Many reason to delay adopting GAAP have been put forth, none of which hold water.

The public needs the unvarnished truth about the sorry condition of our state's finance. It can be as simple as line item in a GAAP budget that shows how much of our state debt each of us owes. Regardless of what tools are employed in the budgeting process, the state, with or without gimmicks, will continue to function, so we might as well have the budget process completed using GAAP.

We will all pay for the deficit, and knowing how much we owe should motivate intelligent voting, rather than following the Pied Piper of fiscal insanity and returning dysfunctional legislators to their positions of presumed, but not demonstrated value.