Friday, April 10, 2009

At least they're in the same room once in a while

Well, I'm sure it took some wrangling but for two short hours, there was living proof that the Governor, Legislative Leadership, and business and leaders could be in the same room to talk about the budget problems.

Brewer has been out and about talking about her 5 Point Plan. The business community seems to be doing their own educating. The education community seems to want to plan a lot of protests.

The solutions are all different though. Legislative leadership seem to be the only ones giving in on some of their plans...a little. Holding steadfast to the no tax pledges, the reality that cuts aren't going to do it have caught up to them.

While they were against the idea before the were for it, borrowing is back on the table. I will reserve judgment and comments until I research it a little more but something doesn't sit well with this one. I guess memories of blog posts and outrage against Napolitano and Obama for doing the same thing are still fresh in my mind.

2 comments:

Thane Eichenauer said...

Ah, the claim that you just can't reduce spending - it's just too impossible. Really? Ya don't say? You can't reduce spending any more. Oh, really? I'll believe it when all the spending has been reduced and the revenue (tax take) balance reaches zero and then somebody asks, what is going to happen?

Even with my personal preference of preferring voter initiatives to legislative spending initiatives I still think that no spending proposal is permissible if you don't have the money to pay for it.

Borrowing is just spending with taxes you don't yet have. If the balance in the government bank reaches zero then it is time to decide what spending should be reduced. Yes, even those programs everybody "agrees" shouldn't be cut.

There are 40,000 people in Arizona state prisons. I can state categorically that there are at least 400 people there on marijuana offenses that don't need to be there.

Increased taxes don't need to be considered. Borrowing doesn't need to be considered. Further efforts to reduce government spending are still the most effective way to eliminate the state government deficit.

AZ Blogger said...

I agree. I'm assuming when they say all possible cuts are being entertained, they mean it.
I promise it's much more than 400 also.