Posted by JM Ashby
The projected job losses caused by the Republican's scorched-earth budget policies, which could number anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million, will not occur in a vacuum. Those losses are going to be accompanied by massive state spending cuts, which are already beginning to take shape in Republican controlled legislatures across the country, and an ideological refusal to raise taxes by even one penny. On the contrary, more corporate tax cuts for many of these states have already been planned or implemented.
In virtually every instance of state budget cuts, education, which by all accounts is already under-funded, is going to take a hit. Some state education programs are going to suffer less than others, while others are being flogged. Providence, Rhode Island recently sent pink slips to all 1,926 "just in-case" it needs to fire them, and now Texas is looking at the possibility of firing 100,000 school teachers and administrators.
Gov. Rick Perry, easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual speech to lawmakers last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, saying Texas families “sent a pretty clear message with their November votes.” He has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.“They want government to be even leaner and more efficient,” Mr. Perry said, “and they want us to balance the budget without raising taxes on families and employers.”To balance the budget with cuts alone, the governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature have put forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year — and would provide no new money to schools for about 85,000 new students that arrive in Texas every year. School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.
Any rational person would look at such a situation and at least consider a slight increase in taxes to increase revenue and fill the holes, but ideology trumps rationality every time in the Republican echo-chamber of dumbstupid.In his latest column, Paul Krugman shined a light on the fraud that has been perpetrated on the education system of Texas. First by George W Bush, and now by Rick Perry. And in a direct parallel to the national debate on reducing deficits and debt, raising taxes is absolutely out of the question and cutting the programs that are most needed to, as President Obama put it, "Win the future," are the first items on the chopping block.
So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.[...] Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”
Today's children are tomorrow's labor force, and despite all of the cries by Republicans about loading up our children and grandchildren with debt, they're doing a damn fine job of ensuring that very few of them will even be prepared to repay their own debts.