As the governor refuses to compromise on the state budget impasse, he appears to be trying to save the people of the Commonwealth from the knife of the legislature. Nothing could be further from the truth. The governor did a lot of cutting before he sent the budget for approval and now everyone from school administrators to senior citizens are concerned about government budgets.
Scotland School for veterans’ children is due to be taken out of the state budget. That means it will close. Last year the school had 279 students this year they had 310, clearly a growing need. But veterans’ children don’t mean anything in the state budget fight because there aren’t many voices to yell one way or another, just veterans. Even though 90% of veterans’ children at Scotland School go on to attend college while the other 10% enroll in the military, we will throw these children away.
The state budget calls for a slow reduction in service to veterans in the Veterans Homes. Although our occupancy rate is consistently 15% above the national average for domiciliary care and 10% above for nursing care, we will cut the budget and no one will complain. The Commonwealth will save approximately 25% of the line item by cutting services to veterans and disadvantaged children of veterans. That means we save about 25 million dollars. We should be proud.
I’ll bet you don’t know much about the Civil Air Patrol. It really doesn’t make any difference because the 2009-10 budget eliminates it. No more volunteer air search and rescue program when airplanes go down in the Commonwealth, at least none subsidized by the Commonwealth.
Veterans Assistance programs are proposed to be cut by 75%. That’s wonderful! I guess we can just forget about PTSD and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) in our returning National Guard soldiers. I’ll bet the Pennsylvania 56th Stryker Brigade returning from Afghanistan in September will be happy to hear that.
I think it’s time we start looking at our budgets and see where all the money is going and start cutting out the waste. I’ll bet the majority of us can agree on a couple of billion dollars worth of fat. Maybe we could start by cutting our legislature in half.
OUTRAGEOUS NEWS
The Obama administration is blaming its inability to correctly calculate the size of projected federal deficits on what it terms "a numerical insufficiency."White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today a panel of distinguished mathematicians will convene next month in Washington in hopes of devising a new number capable of quantifying the enormity of future deficits."The primary problem, as related to us by the Office of Management and Budget, is that there currently exists no known number that large," Gibbs said. "The president believes the most successful way to combat that problem is to invent one." August 28, 2009 Tribune Review
