Budget Battle Wounds Cuts Deep

Our legislators would rather cut off their nose to spite their face. They are willing to spend several hundred thousand bucks on San Francisco lawyer legal fees to defend their right to reject needed federal funds to pay for expanded Medicaid. Go figure! It seems these folks just outright reject anything with Obama’s name on it.

In a time when Alaska is facing the cruelest financial management and budget cuts it seems that the Office of Management and Budget has honed its hatchet and started hacking. The cuts are deep and painful and often without consideration of consequences. In Nome our Youth Facility has been cut apparently with no thought of the impact to the lives of youngsters whose lives are impacted by the loss of direction. Of course there are other cuts to the economics of our university system. The proposed cuts do not just impact the university teaching jobs, but include jobs in construction, health care, real estate, transportation, finance, retail sales and the service sector.

The budget battle gets old and painful. Would we rather keep our jobs and pay an income tax? Or would we rather give up a portion of our PFD to keep the state in business? A tough choice but could account for the least loss of jobs. We need a solution and there is no time for legislative dithering. —N.L.M.—