budget cuts

So how’s that trickle-down working out for Arizona?

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The Arizona Capitol Times (subscription required) reports that Arizona Legislature’s budget analysts predict 2018 shortfall:

The Arizona Legislature’s budget analysts last Thursday predicted a budget shortfall that could top $100 million in the current and coming year as the impact of corporate tax cuts continues to overwhelm increases in sales, insurance premium and personal income tax collections.

Whaaa? You mean tax cuts don’t pay for themselves and are revenue neutral? (sarcasm).

Chief budget analyst Richard Stavneak told economists and state officials who make up the Legislature’s Finance Advisory Committee that the shortfall will hit $104 million. That’s out of an expected $10 billion in spending for the budget year that begins next July 1. A panel of state lawmakers also attended the meeting.

Excluded from that projection is $90 million in current spending that is labeled one-time but appears to be an ongoing commitment by the Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey, Stavneak said. That puts the expected shortfall next year close to $200 million if that spending isn’t cut. The revenue picture could also brighten, but signals are mixed, he said.

Phased-in corporate tax cuts enacted under former Gov. Jan Brewer in 2011 have cut more than $600 million in yearly revenue since 2014. Rep. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, said it may be time to revisit the corporate tax cuts and predicted a budget battle next year.

“It’s going to be a free-for-all. We’re back to the cutting, I don’t see any other way,” Shooter said. “It’s going to come down to who’s going to bleed the least, what’s going to be the least painful, I guess.”

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Arizona Senate

AZ Budget Solution: Grow the Economy, Don’t Starve It (video)

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Arizona Senate
Arizona Senate Chambers

Governor Doug Ducey and Republican leadership in the Legislature made headlines and sparked street protests this week when they tried to ram through a starvation budget that was negotiated in secret.

The wrong-headed budget starved universities with $104 million-dollar in cuts;  it stole even more money from K-12 education with a $98 million hit this year and another $157 million hit in the next year; just for fun, it cut an additional $8-15 from TUSD; it crippled job training with $30 million in cuts; it completely defunded community colleges in Pima, Pinal, and Maricopa Counties; it cut provider rates for people who provide medical care to Medicaid/AHCCCS patients by $127 million (which would result in the loss of $588 million of federal funds). And these are just the highlights.

This severe austerity budget will do nothing to grow the economy. It will starve the economy by taking more than a billion dollars out. This means more lay-offs, more bankruptcies, more business failures, more home foreclosures, more poverty, people on on public assistance, more homelessness, more crime, more incarceration, and more people and businesses leaving our state.

When Republicans talk about budgeting, they often give folksy example of a family sitting around the kitchen table to work out the budget and decide together how they are going to tighten their belts and make ends meet. Didn’t anyone at the kitchen table ever say, “Paw, I could get another job to bring in more money”?

Earlier this year, the media speculated how Ducey could possibly keep his campaign promise of balancing the budget without raising taxes and at the same time allow hundreds of millions of dollars in unaffordable planned corporate tax cuts (passed during the Brewer era) to go forward. (Besides all that, there is the court order that said the Legislature unlawfully cut Arizona school funding and should pay back $317 million in this budget and $1.6 billion in the future.)

Earlier this year, Ducey famously said, just because we don’t have enough money, doesn’t mean we need to raise revenue. Why not? Putting money into the economy grows it; taking money out, starves it. Arizona has options besides austerity. We can raise revenue and pay for the services we want: 1) legalize marijuana; 2) establish a public bank; 3) stop implementation of unaffordable tax cuts for out-of-state corporations; 4) invest in innovation.

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Can You Live on $4.50/day? 20 Congressional Leaders, Staff Join Food Stamp Challenge

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Money02-adj-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Could you live on a $4.50/day food stamp allotment?

Rep. Jim McGovern, who has been leading the charge to stop billions of dollars of cuts to the food stamp program (SNAP), will begin a food stamp challenge tomorrow, June 13, to draw attention to the plight of the poor and hungry in America. Twenty Congressional leaders, staffers, and supporters have joined the challenge to live on $4.50/day for  one week.  Here is information from McGovern's website.

Starting on June 13th, 2013, I will be joining over 20 of my Congressional colleagues, staffers and Massachusetts Secretary of Health and Human Services John Polanowicz for the 2013 National Food Stamp Challenge.

I will live on $4.50 a day for food for a week to bring attention to hunger and the $20 billion in cuts SNAP millions of Americans are facing. This is a conversation we need to have, and I hope this Challenge will help us continue the dialogue. Stay tuned to this page for updates from many of the participants!

And for more on my ongoing efforts to bring attention to hunger on the House floor, visit my #EndHungerNow page.

McGovern has given a series of speeches on ending hunger in America. Watch them here. Fifty million Americans are living with food insecurity. Now is not the time to cut billions from food stamps– while adding billions to the Pentagon budget.

A list of Congressional Representatives taking the National Food Stamp Challenage is after the jump.