Gov. Bill Walker, you should be ashamed of yourself for stooping so low to even consider further fleecing the very taxpayer who supports a lot of this so-called government, especially since you already took 50% of the permanent fund as another form of tax to support your already top-heavy bureaucracy that never seems to get or have enough to spend.
You have plenty of areas to cut the budget without further cutting the throats of the hardworking taxpayers who are the very backbone of your budget spending. I know we don’t pay a so-called state tax, but we do pay federal tax and many hidden taxes that go directly to our state government as well.
It doesn’t take a genius to spend money, but it does take discipline to save and look ahead into the future and plan for adverse conditions and downturns. You can start by not calculating your phony budget with unrealistic income. Rather come in on the low side with your projected income and if you happen to have more than expected, start your own governmental permanent fund to spend on your rainy day shortfall.
You can also start cutting deeper on every department of the government, instead of allotting them an unrealistic budget for today’s economy and making it mandatory that they spend every penny of it and beg for more or risk taking a budget cut in the future. That’s an incentive program alright, but it’s an incentive leading us in the exact wrong direction.
Be a leader and cut spending and government, even though you will hear complaining from various groups. Stand up and take it like the man you should be and represent the people of the state and not the government, special interest groups or other cronyism that’s going on in the state government as well as every government that exists today. You may say the government can’t save since it’s against the law. Make laws that change that — or are you just along for the ride and to get what’s in it for you?
Outlaw lobbyists and he who has the most money wins. This country is formed on a republic, not a democracy that goes with the flow of the most money. Take a look at the web page that shows the millions of dollars paid to lobbyists by all the complaining companies who are taxed too much and governmental agencies which are funded by taxpayer dollars and tell me there isn’t enough money to plentifully fund the important things to keep this state running. No, instead you use the methodology of trying to hurt the people first by cutting road maintenance because that’s your big leverage point. You haven’t even given yourself a razor burn, yet alone a cut.
Leave the permanent fund alone and show the people that you’re really trying to bring government spending under control and then maybe the people will rally around you. The direction you’re headed shows no good-faith effort on your part at all.
We already have proof positive what happens when government gets their hand into the cookie jar. Just look at the Social Security system. More money isn’t the answer. Controlled spending is and that should be your top priority and not further fleecing the people.
Look at the school budget. Another broken governmental agency that is never satisfied yet returns the taxpayer with some of the lowest learning performance ever recorded. More money isn’t the answer again. I get taxed by the borough for the failing school system. I get taxed by the federal government for the failed school system. Every time I turn around, I’m getting some additional form of tax added on my back and it rarely decreases and it causes further hardship. Yet I have never even sent my children to public school. What a fair system. I must say it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it was producing some good fruit, but it’s minimal at best.
The list can go on and on, but hopefully even you can get the point by now. You use our tax dollars against us to support your whole legal staff so you can have these fancy lawyerese laden Senate bills written to try and make it extremely hard to understand and so discourage and intimidate the taxpayer from responding. Sounds like a story of David and Goliath.
Well, shame on you for taking advantage of these hardworking people who are struggling as well, yet don’t allow themselves to go further in debt to supposedly get ahead in life. No, they bite the bullet and make do with what they have and say no to the things they can’t afford. Yes, they sacrifice, so you need to do the same. That will encourage the people and build them up, which is also your job as governor and leader of this great state.
To sum it all up, government needs to diminish and get much smaller as the economy diminishes, instead of continually growing and outgrowing the means to support it. Think ahead a ways and figure out who will support the government when it grows to the point that there are no more nongovernmental people paying taxes. It’s called the law of diminishing returns and it just doesn’t work.
• Andy Cizek is a Soldotna resident.
