It has been quite a ride over the last month with the annual budget wars. The legislature managed to pass Bill Walker’s final budget as their solution to rampant overspending. Governor Dunleavy responded with $444 million worth of budget vetoes, the largest chunk was a 14% cut in the University of Alaska budget, 40% of the state contribution. Reaction to all of this has been loud, unpleasant, and this week triggered a recall petition against the Governor.
Friday morning, read another of the seemingly endless op-eds from a University of Alaska prof on the inhumanity of its budget cut. This got me thinking about math, always a bad idea.
Governor Dunleavy cut $444 million from a state budget that serves around 737,000 Alaskans. Do the math, and this is $602 for every single Alaskan. In the worldview of the Usual Suspects on the left, this is money stolen from individual Alaskans on their services. Oh, the Horror. Oh, the humanity.
But this is useful to make a greater point, as there is much larger theft being done from individual Alaskans. Let’s play along and use the words and worldview of the left to put this in perspective.
Bill Walker’s PFD vetoes removed $3,733 from every single Alaskan who qualifies for the PFD. Reaction from the Usual suspects? Crickets.
The legislature’s attempt to pay a $1,605 dividend this year rather than the anticipated $3,000 under the statutory formula removes $1,495 from the pockets of every Alaskan. Reaction? Crickets.
And not a dime of that PFD money has been spent. Not a bloody cent. Yet. It is all sitting in the Earnings Reserve, and the legislative majority, unions, UA, and the rest of the big government Usual Suspects believe it is theirs and are about to move Heaven and Earth to get their hot little hands on it.
When you listen to our esteemed legislators defend their votes on the budget and to ignore the law on the PFD, consider all the whining, wailing, sackcloth and ashes being thrown around in response to the much smaller per citizen Dunleavy vetoes and wonder why a worse noise was not made about the amount Bill Walker’s PFD vetoes took out of individual pockets, or the $1,495 this legislature proposes to remove from the PFD this year. Last I checked, $3,733 is six times larger than $602 and $1,495 is more than twice as large as $602.
The Usual Suspects believe that money belongs to them. They already have it spent (in their minds). And they are about to make sure we never see any of it again.
Perhaps we should remind them of the error of their ways.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
