Yesterday, big Media Matt highlighted Senator Ensign of Nevada telling us that the states just needed to cut back their “bloated” budgets:
Ensign (R-NV) — who began the show by saying that doing nothing would be better than passing this stimulus plan — insisted that states’ budgets are “bloated” and derided Frank’s concerns as “fearmongering,” denying that any teachers, cops, or firefighters would lose their jobs:
To get back to what Congressman Frank said, is that we’re going to be laying off teachers and firefighters. You know, that’s just fearmongering. We’re not going to be doing that in any of the states. … [The states’] budgets are bloated, the federal government’s budget is bloated. What we should be doing is cutting back.
Via Digby, here is an example of one of those simple cuts:
But now state governments — reeling from a historic free fall in tax revenue — have run out of tricks. And Americans are about to feel it.
In some cases, they already have.
Nevada resident Margaret Frye-Jackman, 71, was diagnosed in August with ovarian cancer. She had two rounds of chemotherapy at University Medical Center, the only public hospital in the Las Vegas area.
Soon after, she and her daughter heard the news on TV: The hospital’s outpatient oncology services were closing because of state Medicaid cuts. Treatment for Frye-Jackman and hundreds of other cancer patients was eliminated.
Apparently Senator Ensign is made of tougher mettle than I am, because if I were a Senator, I probably wouldn’t want to be glibly dismissing the trouble states are in while cutting the life-saving medical care for one of my constituents. Then again, I’m not an aspiring member of the Taliban, so our views on things might be a little different.
linda
the msnbc fratpac + meeka were all over this abomination of a ‘welfare handout’ … joescar bouncing in his chair, screaming that it’s about time the states are responsible for their bloated, generous budgets. now is the time to take the knife to those over-stuffed, wasteful budget items likes schools, fire depts, hospitals…
it’s all just ‘silly stuff’…
Xenos
If the American people fall for this neo-Hooverism we deserve the depression headed our way.
R-Jud
@linda:
… which states are frequently required to provide by federal mandate. It makes sense to me that if the feds require the states to do something, and the states can’t get the money to do it, then the feds should help out. Especially in states that have constitutional prohibitions against deficit spending.
But then, I do not have a show on cable TeeVee, so what do I know?
lilly Von Schtupp
I always believed that the one of the republican’s worst traits was their near total lack of empathy. They simply don’t get it until it happens to them. Unfortunately, we all pay the price for this.
AkaDad
Why does Sen. Ensign hate cancer patients?
Ugh
"If they would rather die,” said Ensign, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
SpotWeld
It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say all those employees would be fired, rather they will leave due to retirement and other means of attrition and no new employees will be hired.
It’s a slightly less scary way of putting it, but it ends up meaning the same. I can’t imagine any governor who wants to be re-elected allowing any critical service area of their state to go understaffed if they can help it.
I fully expected the talking heads to dig up some examples of state level waste, but after you scratch the surface you’ll find that as with the case of the spending bill all this “waste” represents about 1% – 2% of the s total amount at issue.
Libby
The elephant in the room that the GOPers, and to some extent even the Dems, prefer to ignore is that the biggest drain on state budgets is health care costs, both in insurance for state employees and in things like Medicare/Medicaid costs. I think a nationalized, single payer system of some kind would go a long way towards solving that problem.
Second biggest drain on state budgets is prison costs, largely fueled by the war on some drugs. I remember a couple of years ago when MA spent more on prisons, than they did on schools. Not that you’re going to get any idiot politician to make that connection in public.
Gregory
Don’t forget that these same jackasses oppose single payer health care on the alleged grounds that they don’t want some government bureaucrat determining your healthcare. (Private insurance bureaucrats, who have a financial incentive to deny you care, are of course hunky dory with them.)
Stuck
Any doctor will tell you, people experiencing a raging case of ideological frenzy might say about anything. Republicans are currently suffering from a full on epidemagogue.
Comrade Dread
This was just a preview of how Republicans would run nationalized health care.
Zifnab
Fix’d! Ok, now the Republicans should support her.
Fix’d again. Medicare Plan D was the perfect example of how the GOP would like to run nationalized health care. And it would bankrupt us almost instantly. They just plugged a money hose into the pharmaceutical industry and turned on the tap. I mean, there is absolutely zero concern for quality of government. It’s all just about suck up the maximum number of tax dollars.
It continues to floor me that libertarians would EVER touch the GOP. I’ll take naive big government utopian liberals over cynical greedy fascist conservatives any day.
Svensker
@Libby:
Yup yup yup.
Svensker
It only took me 20 years to figure that out.
John Cole
You haven’t been to Hit and Run at Reason magazine lately, have you? Nick Gillespie and the normally sane Matt Welch sound like Red State and Malkin.
I used to fancy myself as somewhat of a libertarian, and truth be told, I still do have a libertarian streak (particularly on social issues). I hate the fact that we have to spend all this money to stop the hemmoraging, but at some point, you have to ask yourself, what is the point of a balanced budget if we are all subsistence farming and living like it is 1934 with 25% unemployment?
jenniebee
@John Cole: I hate the fact that we have to spend all this money to stop the hemmoraging
Well, that’s one way to look at it. Another way is that 99.99% of us (rounded down) agree that roads and electrical grids and bridges and clean air and water are good things for citizens to publicly fund because they provide a fantastic ROI in terms of better quality of life and increased commerce and advantages to the national defense, etc, and that times of economic downturn are the best times to repair and improve those infrastructure elements because not only does it provide stimulus, but also because we citizens can get the work done (thanks to the magic of supply and demand) at much lower rates of cost than we might be charged during boom times.
Republicans are nit-picking a couple of projects they can make to sound ridiculous, but the truth is that most everybody agrees that things like doing the work to prevent another bridge collapse and getting high speed internet access extended past the ‘burbs is not only a good idea, but inevitable over the next 20 years anyway. Why not do it now when it’s cheap and people need jobs?
John Cole
@jenniebee: You might want to go through the bill again. You will be shocked how little of it is going to what you have described.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
KRK
@John Cole:
So you’ve noticed this, too, huh? I’ve been wondering if they’ll ever go far enough to trigger a move to your "monitor and mock" category.
Martin
Well, things are a bit grim here in Cali. The principal of my daughters elementary school just told all of the out-of-border parents that next year their kids will have to go to their neighborhood schools unless they are in a special program. They’ve cancelled classroom reduction for next year and are deciding if they can salvage any of the music program.
This is in one of the highest property tax revenue cities in SoCal and a school district with a private, endowed foundation that receives multimillion dollar infusions from the local real estate developers. We have no buses except for the special education program – so maybe half a dozen of the little ones. Since we are in SoCal, the heat/AC budget is virtually zero, and PE facilities are an open field – no gyms or pools. Also no cafeteria – kids eat outside or in their classroom on the rare rainy day. But the principal is trying to figure out what 8 positions he’s going to eliminate – that’s a lot in a school with 3 classrooms each from K-6.
If we’re having these kinds of troubles here I hate to think what the schools out in the boonies are facing.
Comrade Kevin
@Martin: Part of that is also because the dumb fucks in the Assembly, Senate and Governor’s office can’t get their goddamn act together and pass a fucking budget.
If people think the Republicans in DC are being obstructionist, take a look at California.
Libby
My internets went goofy this morning so this comment wouldn’t post earlier but I’ll post it now since the thread is still small.
The elephant in the room that the GOPers, and to some extent even the Dems, prefer to ignore is that the biggest drain on state budgets is health care costs, both in insurance for state employees and in things like Medicare/Medicaid costs. I think a nationalized, single payer system of some kind would go a long way towards solving that problem.
Second biggest drain on state budgets is prison costs, largely fueled by the WoSD. I remember a couple of years ago when MA started spending more on prisons, than they did on schools. Not that you’re going to get any idiot politician to make that connection in public.
Rick Taylor
I agree . It’s a pity, if we’d planned for this earlier we could have come up with something better. But if you wait until the economy is falling off a cliff before responding, you can’t be choosy. That makes the claims of Republican fiscal responsibility even more facetious, as the longer we wait the more expensive it’s going to be to dig ourselves out, assuming it’s even possible.
Martin
The pity is that we were running budget SURPLUSES back in 2000 (you know, back when we had a Democratic president). Had we kept that going, nobody would have minded stopping paying down the national debt for a year or two to address the economy.
MNPundit
Hmm couldn’t republicans just say that everyone over 70 should kill themselves to make room for the rest of us? Personal responsibility after all!
jenniebee
@John Cole: well, crap on a cracker, what the fuck is wrong with these people anyway? What is the money getting spent on then?
That’s it, I’m running for Eric Cantor’s seat in 2010. Do you think the Rude Pundit would agree to be my press secretary? Because I have a funny feeling that a year and a half from now, he’s really going to resonate.
Beej
There are a bunch of states whose state constitutions mandate a balanced budget. In my state, where that is true, we do, fortunately, have a small reserve fund that can be used to offset some of the decrease in state revenues. That’s not going to last long, though. At some point (the governor, a Republican, estimates about 14 months) cuts in the budget are going to have to be made. Since most state health care spending is federally mandated and can’t really be cut, even though it’s one of the biggest parts of the budget, that means that the cutting will start with state jobs, move on to the state college and university system, and then get down to the real meat with cutting state aid to schools. Cities, including mine, are already at the hiring freeze stage. No new police or fire-fighters even though our population is growing at the rate of about 8K-10K people per year, a substantial increase for a city of 250,000. Oh, incidentally, the real impact of the financial crisis has not reached us here yet. Can’t wait until it hits full force.
RememberNovember
FatCat big Gov Federalists says States need to cut back budgets???Pot meet kettle…….NY is on a doomsday budget as are other states as unemployment hits double digits…then again NY Senate is notoriously fubar. Salt on the wound.