SPECTRUM: Legislature, governor let Alaskans down again

Senator Shelley Hughes joined Senator Mike Dunleavy on the list of legislators who put their ethics, the party platform, their constituents, and their conscience before the lockstep voting in a political majority.

The compromise HB57 is still a sellout to the governor and to the big-government-kill-the-Alaskan-economy crowd in the House and Senate. This governor and the legislature are ignoring the news regarding the fiscal failures of Illinois and Puerto Rico’s Democrat-controlled governments.

Over the last four years, 20,000 more Alaskans left the state than came to live here. Note the increasing number of ‘For Sale’ signs around the Valley and Anchorage. Remember the real estate massacre at the completion of TAPS? We are in a recession that is getting worse. Alaska’s unemployment rate this summer is the worst in the U.S.

This economic reality belies the concern over education funding. Why is more money needed when the population is declining?

The price of oil is staying below $50/bbl, and will continue to average in the mid-$40s. The supply exceeds the demand. There is no economic improvement anywhere in the world to consume the oil being warehoused in supertankers floating around the Indian Ocean.

The governor’s hostility towards the oil industry will not create confidence to increase investment. Penalizing resource development is foolish in a recession. However, that’s what Democrats do, exactly the opposite of what should be done, which is to deregulate, lower taxes and get government out of the way.

Apparently, after all the campaign rhetoric on both sides of the political aisle, the idea of a sustainable budget has once again been deferred to sometime into an indefinite future.

Why?

Neither the legislature nor the governor wants restrictions placed on budgets. They want to retain the ability to buy votes by providing we plebes with a “circus” in the form of whatever it takes to distract we plebes from the real issues affecting Alaska: a recession and state spending that cannot be sustained.

Proposed new taxes and increased regulation that increase the burden upon both the individual Alaskan and Alaska’s businesses are our liberal governor’s and our legislature’s solution in the face of economic duress.

In the House, the entire Valley delegation voted against the governor’s plan, to their credit. In the Senate, the compromise of HB57 passed. No substantive decrease in spending, just smoke and mirrors. Senator Shelley Hughes voted against the compromise, Senator Mike Dunleavey missed the vote, and Senator David Wilson voted with the Senate Majority.

The money was there to provide us with a full dividend this year and to fully fund education, because of a good return on the Permanent Fund’s stock investments. There was no basis for the Legislature to agree with the governor and reduce by $1,200 this year’s PFD to feed a state government that doubled in size from 2006-2014. Government spending that Walker promised to cut 16% the first year of his administration.

In failing to support the payment of the full PFD amount of $2,300 the Senate Majority failed to distinguish itself from the Democrat-led House in supporting the governor’s desire to tax and spend us into insolvency.

It is amazing how many Republicans running for reelection claim to be fiscal conservatives, until that first majority vote on a budget that they know to be excessive.

Further, the Senate Majority could have pushed the cuts to $300 million, instead of the faux spending cuts characterized by both Senator Shelley Hughes and Senator David Wilson as merely shuffling money around without making any real cuts. The alleged cut in the compromise approved by the Senate was stated as $179 million, when it really was at most $75M due to creative accounting.

The Alaska Gas Development Corporation kept its $50 million that it did not need, but each of us lost $1,200 of this year’s PFD.

The Republican leadership in the House and Senate had the opportunity to oppose HB57 and to make a strong statement regarding priorities and to distance themselves from a failed Democrat tax and spend policy. Promises that included keeping the PFD intact and passing a sustainable budget. Instead, the PFD is once again reduced to the detriment of Alaskans who need the money and there is no sustainable spending plan.

That $2,300 would have been a literal boon to unemployed Alaskans and those on fixed incomes. Instead, the bloated state bureaucracy was the Senate’s majority’s concern, not their constituents.

Larry Wood is a Palmer resident.