An Immoral Budget

By Michael Bryan

There are bad budgets. There are harmful budgets. There are short-sighted budgets. There are unbalanced budgets. This year's Arizona state budget is all those things, and more.

Arizona's proposed 2011 budget is actually immoral.

State governments have a few core responsibilities: elementary and higher education, healthcare, and protecting the least affluent and most vulnerable from the harshest realities of abject poverty. The budget that the Governor and Legislative leaders have agreed upon abdicates every single one of those responsibilities in name of deficit reduction and ideological purity.

Here's a summary:

• Cuts $511 million, a higher cut than any proposal to date, from AHCCCS and results in an additional $1.2 billion loss in federal matching dollars.
• Cuts up to 280,000 people from health care coverage.
• Cuts $183 million from K-12 education in addition to the $600 million cut in the last four years.
• Cuts $198 million from universities in addition to the over $200 million cut in the last four years.
• Cuts $73 million from community colleges in addition to the over $50 million cut in the last four years.
• Cuts the Department of Economic Security by $50 million.
• Cuts 13,000 children from receiving daycare services.
• Cuts the Department of Health Services by $53 million.

These cuts are not trimming the fat. After two years of budget deficits, state programs have been trimmed to the bone: the GOP is now loping off limbs.

They are destroying the ability of our state to function as a competitive economic entity. They are making Arizona a third-world country.

They are pursuing a deeply non-conservative agenda which seeks to radically restructure our state and our society by privatizing major state functions (including higher and elementary education, corrections, and healthcare), placing any remaining tax burdens mainly on the poor and middle class (luckily their "flat" tax increase for 80% of Arizonans died in committee), and consolidating all political control in the state government by stripping local communities of their autonomy.

But how, you might ask, can a budget be immoral?

Their budget is immoral because it fundamentally abrogates the social compact by balancing the budget on backs of those who stand to lose their health, their future prospects, and their very lives.

Their budget is immoral because it strips our children of their right to a free public education and seeks to cripple public education so the charlatans and ideologues who want to steal a portion of that investment for themselves may feast on the carcass of a critically wounded public education system.

Their budget is immoral because it will close the door to a better life through higher education to thousands upon thousands of Arizona's young adults due to skyrocketing tuition and fees.

Their budget is immoral because it cripples Arizona's ability to compete for good jobs in the coming century's increasingly competitive knowledge-based economy.

Their budget is immoral because it will ensure and death and disability of thousands of Arizonans who rely on our public healthcare system.

Their budget is immoral because it will greatly increase the cost of healthcare insurance in Arizona because the private sector will be forced to absorb the expenses the government seeks to abdicate.

Their budget is immoral because it will force the closure of many healthcare facilities that we all rely on.

Their budget is immoral because it will throw thousands upon thousands out of work in the healthcare and education sectors, further weakening an already battered economy suffering from chronic under-emplyment.

You might point out that these effects are not intended. These are merely side-effects of necessary budgetary cuts in a face of a fiscal crisis, and thus, even if all this comes to pass, the budget is merely unfortunate, but not immoral.

Immorality isn't always practiced with willful maliciousness. Sometimes, immorality results from taking actions in complete ignorance of, or indifference to, the results of one's actions. The GOP's relentless stripping of state revenues over the past 15 years has resulted in this series of budget crises. These results were forseeable; they just didn't care to look, or were too blinded to see. 

I suspect that the leaders of the Arizona GOP have become so disconnected from reality, so ideologically steadfast, so obdurate in their hatred of government and any shared social responsibility, that they simply can no longer see or acknowledge the harm they do. They have become so enslaved to the single imperative of always cutting taxes, that they can no longer do otherwise even if they know they should -or even wish they could. Political survival in today's GOP requires fealty to The Principle: never raise taxes (unless it's regressive and falls mainly on the poor and middle class, apparently [as demonstrated by Brewer's 1% temporary sales tax and the attempt to impose a flat tax this session]).

When the leaders of a society have become blind to the needs of the people they are meant to govern, an immoral government is the result.

I predict that many in our society who have been asleep to public affairs, wrapped in the comforting belief that their government is acting in their best interest, are about to be rudely awakened. And they are going angry at being so rudely awakened to the sure knowledge that those who were asked to watch over their slumber have so grossly and immorally neglected their duties.

Immorality has consequences. The Arizona GOP is going to reap what it hath sown.