Walker and Mallott haven’t given us an honest budget

Lt. Gov. Byron Mallot opines that "We have to have a serious conversation about our fiscal crisis."  (ADN commentary, Oct. 22) We are still waiting for just such a conversation from Mr. Mallot and his boss, the Democrats' Governor, Gov. Bill Walker.

Three years into a recession, three years of budgets he approved drawing down $14 billion in reserves, and three years of tens of millions poured in to a fantasy gas pipeline, and yet never once, not a single time, have the do-nothing governor and lieutenant governor ever bothered to introduce a balanced budget.

Alaskans would appreciate just the tiniest bit of honesty from this administration.  Could they, possibly, do some actual hard work and produce and show us a budget based on actual expected revenue?

For example, say we have $1.5 billion coming in, what would a $1.5 billion budget look like?

Now that is a serious conversation starter.  That would start a serious conversation with respect and honesty.

That would require going beyond fantasy gas lines and Democratic jargon of taxes, taxes and more taxes. Walker and Mallot would actually have to do some hard work to balance the budget and then have the serious conversation about fiscal reality and rebuild from there.

Alaskans could see real numbers, real consequences, and debate real choices.

[Could lawmakers approve a tax in their special session? Some think so]

Instead, the Democrats' Governor and Lieutenant Governor throw out tired canards.  Such as… oh my, we are spending at 2008 levels!  So what?  How is that a serious conversation?  Low government spending has caused a recession!  Gibberish — everyone except Walker and Mallot know the recession is due to low oil prices and low volume in the pipeline.

Do – your – job – Governor.  Blaming others and calling endless special sessions is as fruitless, useless and pointless now as it was a year ago, and a year before that.

It is your job to produce an actual budget, one that reflects actual dollars anticipated.   Only then can Alaskans and the Legislature clearly debate what we could live with and live without.

What an absurdity that the do-nothing governor and lieutenant governor point to their own failure as evidence we should pay for more of the same!
Mr. Mallot says, in effect, that he and the governor are doing a terrible job with the ferry system, they are doing a terrible job with public education, they are doing a terrible job fighting crime, they are helpless in the face of an opioid crisis, they have utterly failed to generate a gas line.  These bizarre arguments he uses as an excuse to demand our PFD dividends, a wage tax, an income tax, a fuel tax and on and on.

What an irony that the incompetence of Walker and Mallot is the very excuse they use to demand more from your pocketbook!

Anyone can play budget games with the numbers.  Some hard questions: during the last three years how many actual state employees have we reduced?  During this massive multi-year recession and massive deficit have the automatic wage increases for state employees been suspended?  Have new contract negotiations led to savings and reductions?  Have any departments been eliminated?  Is Alaska still funding the discretionary portions of Medicaid?   The list goes on and on – a bloated budget indeed.

What Walker/Mallot have done is spent almost all our reserves, taken half the PFD and tucked it away for later, and ignored filling the pipeline.

Disaster!  So Lt. Governor Mallot declared: We must have taxes!  We must have your money!  Squeeze money out of businesses, working Alaskans, the elderly, the poor and the children… because government must be fed.

A serious conversation about our fiscal crisis?  Of course!
Let's begin:

(1) Fill the pipeline,  (2) with oil.  (3) See the treasury filled with cash. \

Walker/Mallot offer a theatrical comedy of a lieutenant governor giving speeches about moving away from reliance on fossil fuels.  A fantasy future far away in Neverland.  What next? Perhaps hire another climate change mystic?  Hire your campaign manager as a personal aide? A $700,000 a year fantasy gas line Tinkerbelle loaded with pixie dust?

Perhaps one of the silliest, and yet destructive, choices of Walker/Mallot is an administration trying to bully oil companies into backing his fantasy gas line.  The least likely way to fill the oil pipeline.

What of promising new oil fields discovered by amazing entrepreneurial companies like Caelus, Armstrong and ConocoPhillips? All but ignored by our own Captain Hook sailing aimlessly around Neverland looking only for his mythical gas line.

Serious conversation?  Nothing serious about that, except dire consequences for Alaskans.

Walker and Mallot gives us three years of hand-wringing, do-nothing status quo, and the Democrats' tired reflex: tax, tax, tax.

What Alaska needs right now is to replace Walker and Mallot with a leader focused on moving forward, on filling the pipeline, bridging the fiscal gap and getting our economy roaring again.

That choice is clear: either fill the pipeline, or slowly empty Alaska.

Tuckerman Babcock is chairman of the Republican Party of Alaska.

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