Voices

Jenkins: Democrats and unions know this session is last chance to strike it rich

Stop the presses! Those nasty ol' Alaska Republicans are at it again, wrecking government, sowing ruin, keeping poor people down and coddling the evil oil industry -- at least that's the agitprop peddled by Democrats and their union pals as they try to justify hijacking the legislative process for their own political ends.

What the House minority Democrats want -- and cannot publicly admit -- is House GOP majority agreement to spend about $80 million in savings Alaska cannot spare on things Alaska does not really need, before they will vote to tap the Constitutional Budget Reserve and balance next year's budget.

Their laundry list contains everything from $18 million for cost-of-living raises for the state's union employees -- but not the state's exempt employees -- to $1.4 million for construction training.

They also want to expand Alaska's broken Medicaid program to add coverage for around 40,000 Alaskans, but that is going nowhere, despite hollow promises it will save the state money and deliver 4,000 pie-in-the-sky jobs. (It should be noted other states already are afraid of being buried by costs after unanticipated exploding enrollment numbers after such expansions.)

Here's the best part: The lion's share of the loot they want, the left says -- wait for it -- is for the kids. They want $48 million for K-12 "education," code nowadays for "teachers' union."

What they are not saying is why they want the money -- need the money -- right now. Next year it will be tougher to pry loose cash when the cutting gets closer to the bone. Two years from now, it will be impossible. It is now or never. Oh, and if they can blame any government shutdown they may cause on Republicans, so much the better.

What would they cut to justify adding more spending to the already bedraggled budget? The new Legislative Information Office, which will have to be paid for anyway, oil tax credits, which will have to be paid for anyway and stopping work on the Susitna dam, where work is underway and will have to be paid for anyway.

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A reasonable person might wonder at their thinking, but they are charging ahead.

What to do? What to do? How can we sell this pig? The left must have asked before settling on the tried-and-true "Republicans bad; Democrats good" meme.

In the past few weeks, Alaskans have been treated to garden-variety malarkey steeped in hot-button hyperbole wrapped in vague half-truths that beg credulity even among the left's ever-faithful. They say things such as: "It is too bad we live in a state that puts industry tax credits ahead of kids," as if that were even remotely true. It has been a tidal wave of propaganda. The left and its union chums have redefined, retooled and resold the "Big Lie."

There have been the usual half-baked explanations; the laughably "grass-roots" rallies full of signs saying usefully idiotic things; rafts of letters to the editor where all the writers surprisingly hit the same points; Democratic operatives masquerading as pundits, and anything else the left could toss against the wall. It has been enough to make a rat swoon.

Despite the left's obfuscation, the reality is clear. Alaska is in a fix. It has a $5.5 billion budget and about $2 billion in revenue. The state is about $3.5 billion short of balancing its budget this year.

The reasons are clear. North Slope oil was selling for about $100 a barrel on average; now it is selling for about half that. That oil pays for 90 percent of state discretionary spending.

To make ends meet, the state must pull, in round numbers, about $3.5 billion from its reserves, most likely the $10 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve -- although there are options -- to make ends meet. Dipping into the CBR requires a three-quarters vote of the Legislature, something House Democrats see as an invitation to extortion.

You would think anybody with even a lick of sense would realize spending money in our current circumstances on anything but absolute necessities is moronic, especially when it likely will have to be cut next year. Yet, the adults in the room, Republicans trying to hold the line, are the ones being hounded and berated and pilloried for resisting calls to blow through the state's savings so the left can pay off its pals.

At some point, perhaps our friends on the left will understand the days of profligate spending without dire consequences are over.

Hopefully, for Alaska's sake, it will be sooner rather than later.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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