"This Government has refused to come to grips with the realities of cost containment and live within it means, like you and I must do, Mr. Speaker. If I blow the family budget, the family gets in trouble. When the Government blows its budget, as it has two years in a row, the entire Bermuda family is required to pay for their transgressions. How fair is that?

"And the likelihood of Government blowing the budget placed before us now is indeed very high."

So said Shadow Finance Minister E.T. (Bob) Richards in his lengthy and hard hitting Reply to the Budget on Friday. And in doing so he hit on a central criticism of the Budget now being debated. Taxes have been increased by more than an estimated $100 million to cover Government expenses, with more than $77 million of that coming in payroll taxes which will hit and hurt most working Bermudians and employers.

But there has been very little true spending restraint on the part of Government, and where there have been cuts, such as in the hospital subsidy or in the estimate for substitute teachers, they seem to be based mainly on wishful thinking. Are old people or teachers less likely to fall ill in 2010 than they did in 2009? And that, as Mr. Richards says, is the real tragedy of this Budget. When things were good, Government spent the money they did not expect to get. When things are bad, they can't shake the habit.

In 2008, the United Bermuda Party said this: "This Government, in its last five budgets, has collected $317.6 million more revenue than it budgeted for. What happened to all this money? Has the Government given it back to the people in the form of tax cuts? No. Have they made extra payments on their debt? No. What have they to show for all this current spending? The truth is that they have nothing to show for it except just bigger government."

On Friday, Mr. Richards said: "Mr. Speaker, we sure could use that $317.6 million now."

Mr. Richards is right. The true inequity of this Budget is that the public is being expected to pay for the errors of the past, and the Government continues to take no responsibility. When Finance Minister Paula Cox says that everyone must make sacrifices, it simply does not ring true, because the sacrifices are not being shared equally.

Here's one place to start. It has been reported that McKeeva Bush, the Premier of the Cayman Islands, has called for legislators, including himself, should take a pay cut. In Bermuda, there is silence; in fact, it seems the Finance Minister and others may get raises if a bill abolishing the designation for part-time Ministers is approved. Does that make any sense?

It is also, as the Bermuda Public Service Union has stated, hard to believe that Bermuda needs the wave of consultants who have flooded Government in recent years.

That is especially true when, in at least one case, no means of measuring the consultant's performance seems to exist.

According to Environment Minister Glenn Blakeney, Ambling International was contracted to analyse the Department of Planning's operations procedures and to help to establish new internal policies.

But, in Mr. Blakeney's phraseology: "The contract did not contain specific any deliverables."

In other words, there was no means of determining the consultants' performance. All of this for $967,750.74 over two years. The savings are there. You just have to look for them.