In the final dash to budget day, the NDP are running short of excuses to deep-six income tax relief. Because the government has cried wolf one time too many on the phantom deficit, Manitobans are unlikely to fall prey to further spurious excuses for the no-income-tax-cut lament.

We're told that it's not poor policy decisions that hold Manitoba's economy back, but the luck of the lottery. Alberta hit it rich with Texas tea - the precondition for wealth and tax cuts. Oil-scarce Manitoba, meanwhile, drew the short end of the stick and has struggled ever since in the shadows of the resource-blessed provinces.

Once tested against reality, the lottery argument folds like an empty wallet. Saskatchewan, Quebec, and New Brunswick are all have-not provinces feeding from the trough of federal transfers but astute enough to announce income tax cuts in their 2000 budgets. In Manitoba, equalization payments are up $300 million but talk of tax cuts is cheap. The have-not-provinces have never had it so good and the have-provinces have never been more had.

With tax revenues and federal transfer payments shooting through the roof, Finance Minister Greg Selinger couldn't avoid hitting a surplus even if he tried. Knowing how governments tend to underestimate and over-deliver, count on Manitoba's surplus to multiply exponentially by budget day.

The absence of an income tax cut is not something left to chance, to forces beyond the government's control. It's a calculated political decision to sink extra revenues into bureaucratic empire building instead of returning it to debt-swamped Manitoba families.

Ask for an income tax cut and the Doer government will tell you it's hopeless. Ask for a pile of cash for your pet project and the NDP asks how much?

In no particular order, here are the latest top five reasons why the NDP refuse to deliver an income tax cut. I couldn't decide whether to rank them by dollars wasted or by their degree of offensiveness:

1. A $7 million corporate welfare package for J.M Schneider after the NDP committed to erasing $20 million in business subsidies prior to the election;

2. A three-month hiring frenzy of 354 bureaucrats, including two spin doctors, despite repeated promises to put a freeze on new positions;

3. A $113,800 grant for a social engineering program to keep kids off the street;

4. A $43,000 junket for local film bureaucrats to ham it up on the Emerald Island under the pretence of promoting their wares to international markets. The one market that counts most is the US. But Americans will have nothing to do with most Canadian films produced for arts bureaucrats instead of audiences;

5. Finally, the province will sink $8 million in a Potemkin village housing fixer-upper for the inner city. The money does nothing to address the reasons why people let their homes go to rot in the first place. A culture of neglect in one's neighborhood is not about to be reversed after a new coat of paint is applied.

Six months after the election and already the scales are tipped in favour of spending. The government has chosen to put Manitobans over the barrel instead of cash on the barrel. Don't blame Alberta. Don't blame chance. Just chalk it up to the players behind the budget.