Living Within Our Means

The NH House Finance Committee is currently working on the state budget. They are outraged by the budget sent to them by Governor Hassan, and so the pushback begins. So far it contains every bit of cruelty that today’s Republican Party has ever wanted to inflict on the non-wealthy, and plenty more besides.

NH’s infrastructure is the 11^th worst in the nation, and that was before this winter. The Republicans on the Finance committee want to slash $88 million from the Dept. of Transportation (DOT) budget.  Some bridges would be closed. Welcome centers and rest areas would be closed. (Probably not the ones where we sell cheap booze to tourists.) Approximately 700 jobs would be lost, that’s half the workforce. Federal funds would be lost. Say goodbye to completing the widening of I-93. NH has failed to invest in infrastructure for decades, but this is a kind of bold, intentional negligence that is hard to imagine in a state that relies so heavily on tourist dollars. This also means that 2500 miles of roads and 1000 bridges would be turned over to cities and towns to pay for.

The state was sued for providing inadequate treatment services for the mentally ill. The class action lawsuit was settled in 2013.

The Republicans on the Finance Committee are suggesting that the terms agreed to in the settlement be underfunded by 20%. Some other legislature can deal with the costs of the next lawsuit, right?

Apparently the Republicans on the House Finance Committee really hate old people. They’re suggesting higher taxes on nursing homes, as well as higher fees and $26 million in state funding cuts. They’ve also proposed $10.5 million in cuts to social services for the elderly, cutting funds for transportation, caregivers, senior meals and meals on wheels. Our new state motto: Hey Olds: Live food free and die.

Some $2 million in proposed cuts to community health centers. At a time when heroin addiction and overdoses are rampant, the Republicans on the House Finance Committee have suggested cutting the inadequate addiction services budget by $6 million. Governor Hassan had proposed $8 million for emergency homeless shelters. The Finance Committee has cut that in half.

Representative Neal Kurk is the chair of the Finance Committee. He’s from Weare. His district consists of the towns of Weare and Deering. If you are from any of the other 219 towns or 13 cities in NH, you did not vote for Neal Kurk. That doesn’t matter - he’s not shy about speaking for you. “This is what the people of NH want,” he intones, with regards to the budget cuts he’s proposing. It seems unlikely he’s spoken all of the people in NH, especially those north of Concord. To his credit, he does not approve of the DOT cuts. He understands the connection between infrastructure and commerce. He doesn’t want to hurt the roads and bridges. Hurting people is a different story.

The people who want to make NH a failed state are the libertea crowd, a mix of John Birchers, Tea Partiers, and Free Staters.  Representative Dan McGuire, a Free Stater from Epsom, is emerging as a star pillager in this year’s budget follies.

Representative McGuire has proposed $2 million in cuts to the NH Veteran’s Home. The Veteran’s Home was established in 1890 as the Soldier’s Home for Civil War Veterans. It’s now a home for elderly and disabled NH veterans. The cuts proposed by McGuire would mean that the Veteran’s Home would have to kick out 25 residents. I suggest that Representative McGuire be the one to go in and choose who gets kicked out. I further suggest that this be televised.

The cruelty goes on and on. The Republicans are desperate to eliminate the NH Health Protection Program that is currently providing 37,000 NH families with health care, and has reduced emergency room visits to hospitals by 17% in just 6 months. The BIA supports the NHPP, by the way. It is slated to sunset in 2016. Failure to extend the program will mean a loss of approximately $240 million in federal funds.

The Republicans on the House Finance Committee are also intent on gutting existing Medicaid services to adults. They are eliminating personal care assistance for people who are wheelchair bound, and eliminating therapy for stroke victims. They’re also eliminating access to ambulances, optometry, audiology, and speech, physical and occupational therapy. Medicaid covers adults with developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries. What kind of people even think of doing this? If a budget is a moral document, NH is heading for the warm place.

A proposed Kurk/McGuire cut of $60 million in DD funds (developmental disabilities) failed on a tie vote in committee. This would be 10% of DD funding. Remember the shameful DD wait list? It’s likely to be coming back.

The Finance Committee hasn’t just cut funds to Service Link; they’ve eliminated them altogether. It seems that if you’re not funding any services, you don’t need an organization to help people find them.

In many cases, the cuts being made will result in further cost shifting to counties, cities and towns. Those cities and towns will have to come up with funding – and you know what that means. Hello property tax increases!

There will be a significant loss of federal dollars. The libertea crowd thinks this is striking a blow for independence from the gummint. What it really means is that instead of a portion of your federal tax dollars coming back to NH, they’ll go to some other state. FREEDUMB!

The Republicans on the House Finance Committee assert that they have to do make all of these budget cuts, and they mouth the usual platitudes about “living within our means.” If NH is in such dire straits for revenue, how is it that the Senate has passed SB 1 and SB 2- bills that cut the business enterprise tax and the business profits tax to the tune of tens of millions of dollars? What they’re saying is that if we lack sufficient revenue to run our state in a responsible and humane way, we should make big cuts to revenue sources.

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.”  George Eliot