A Reminder to our General Assembly and our Governor.
This is a press release from the Progressive Democrats for Delaware. In the interests of full disclosure, I am also a member of PDD and am currently the group’s Vice President and Treasurer, and along with our Steering Committee, drafted this statement. I post it here for wider dissemination, and because I think most if not all of our contributors and commentators would agree with it. I encourage you to contact the Governor’s office and your state Senators and Representatives. Tell them to restore all spending cuts, and eliminate all tax give-aways to the wealthy and businesses.
In times of budget austerity and a slowly recovering economy, Delaware is blessed with a gift. A projected $365 million budget surplus.
While lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee have taken a time out in their budget negotiations, now would be a good time to remind them, and the Governor, of some progressive priorities.
Now is not the time to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Now is not the time to give still further tax give-aways to the wealthy and to multi-billion dollar corporations, all the while we ask the least among us to suffer more. Now is the time to restore all of Governor Markell’s past spending cuts and reject his proposed spending cuts, most notably, the $5 million in Medicaid cuts.
At the same time, the Joint Finance Committee and lawmakers in the General Assembly cannot go on a wild spending spree. Until the economy is more stable, we urge the Governor and the General Assembly to restore all past spending cuts, reject all spending cuts that have been proposed, eliminate all tax cuts that have been proposed, and keep the remaining surplus in a “rainy-day fund” while lawmakers and citizens have more time to review plans for our state agencies and policy priorities.
Indeed, one of those priorities is controlling healthcare costs and reducing the budget burden imposed on the state by Medicare and Medicaid. With the surplus, now Governor Markell and the General Assembly have more time to develop a plan that does not afflict the afflicted while giving comfort to the comfortable.
