Call it a ‘stimulus’ and I’m all for it

Ever since Gov. Walker announced he was halving everyone’s expected PFD payout, Alaskans have searched every which way to find a way around it.

All this caterwaul only reinforced my view as a newcomer to The Last Frontier that the PFD payouts are, in fact, entitlements, holiday giveaways that some 643,000 men, women and children are dangerously addicted to.

Most attempts to thwart Walker’s vetoes begin and end by questioning his legal ability to do so. The most prominent effort is the lawsuit filed by Anchorage Senator Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat, challenging the constitutionality of the matter.

Even with an expedited legal process, favored by both the plaintiff and the defendant, this isn’t likely to put $700 million into the pockets of PFD-qualifying Alaskans anytime soon.

Then, along comes Wasilla Senator Mike Dunleavy, with his proposal to have the second half of the PFD in everyone’s pockets by February. On Wednesday, he announced his plan in Anchorage, but on Tuesday, he lent The Frontiersman the courtesy of an interview prior to his announcement on a promise to not publish his plan until after the announcement.

Dunleavy’s plan is different than the rest. Like the others, it starts with a legal challenge to the governor’s authority — but it doesn’t end there.

“I’ve been troubled since the vetoes by two issues about the future of the fund — is it a way to pay for the government, or is it really the people’s endowment for royalties, because they do not have subsurface property rights?” Dunleavy said Tuesday in his Wasilla office. “I think, to a degree, it’s a royalty.”

The second part of what bothered him was something I wasn’t even aware of and hadn’t considered. I assumed that lopped off half of the PFD was going toward paying government bills, but Dunleavy explained that wasn’t the case; that all that money is sitting in the Earnings Reserve, not in the Constitutional Budget Reserve, nor the Statutory Budget Reserve. In other words, the rest of your PFD isn’t in a place for government to use it for government needs anytime real soon.

I did not know that, but from what I can gather, he’s right.

No matter how fundamentally flawed the PFD system might be, this is no time to be holding out on people if you’re not going to put it into infrastructure projects, social programs or deficit reduction right away.

All of this leads into Dunleavy’s fundamental concern.

“Everyone is worried about cash flow problems at the government level, but the private economy is falling apart,” Dunleavy said. “We must come up with a fiscal plan this session to pay the state’s bills, but it’s the wrong time to take an additional $666 million out of an already struggling private economy and an additional $1,030 out of the pockets of Alaskans.”

Here, he makes another good point. Since Walker’s vetoes, government agencies around the state have been bellyaching so hard they’ve taken all the oxygen out of the room, so we haven’t heard nearly enough about the struggles facing the private sector.

“This needs to be distributed in the private economy,” Dunleavy said. “Slow down the decline in the private economy.”

Having been here just three months as of last Tuesday, I don’t get a PFD, so, selfishly and honestly, I don’t care a whole about any of that. But me, and most of the 100,000 or so Alaskans who don’t get October visits from Santa, benefit plenty from a robust retail environment.

Now I’m starting to like this plan — or at least its justification — more and more. And so I ask Dunleavy, “Is this a stimulus package?”

The Senator paused a bit, and admitted he’d been struggling with trying to find the right word for it, though ‘stimulus’ certainly wasn’t it.

“It’s more like the opposite of a stimulus,” he said. “Not as a stimulus, more of a restoration.”

‘Stimulus’ has been political poison ever since George W. Bush sent us all $600 checks in the mail in the hopes of putting the burden of the looming recession onto his successor. It didn’t work for his legacy, nor for the economy in the short-term. In fact, it just scared the hell out of everyone about just how bad the oncoming carnage must be if Uncle Sam is reduced to throwing cash at us.

But that doesn’t mean stimulus is a bad idea. Austerity, now that’s a bad idea. There’s really no getting out of austerity — just ask the Greeks.

Whenever I talk to any experienced Alaskans about what should be done about the PFD, every single one of them wants to recite me a history lesson and cite chapter and verse about what the PFD was ‘meant to’ be.

Uff da.

Listen, I’m the new Alaska. There’s a whole lot more like me coming. We don’t wring our hands and see the glass empty. We, instead, look at the endless possibilities all around that don’t exist so much anymore in the Lower 48. We see the glass half full.

We don’t care about saintly Governor Hammond or what was decreed in 1982, or pointless semantic disputes over whether the PFD is a handout or a royalty.

This state leveraged too heavily and gave too much power to big oil, for way too long.

Oil’s not coming back.

Penance won’t make it so.

This is a new Alaska we’re building and you can’t grow by shrinking.

Dunleavy’s plan is a good idea, even if he won’t call it what it is.