FY 2011 Mass. Budget: The Needle and the Damage Done

Almost 40 years ago, Neil Young wrote a song about the destruction caused by heroin use among many musicians he knew at the time. It was called, fittingly enough, "The Needle and the Damage Done." Although such music is far from what I listen to these days (chillout, lounge, hip-hop, and classic jazz ... among much else ... for those of you who might be interested), the song title popped into my head when I sat down to write my editorial on the latest chapter in the Mass. state budget disaster. Because I think ideology can be like heroin at times - driving people to do the wrong thing again and again in the face of strong evidence pointing towards much better courses of action. So when I read about Gov. Deval Patrick signing the FY 2011 budget - just after vetoing $457.6 million from the House-Senate Conference Committee budget, which itself already contained a bunch of program cuts - all I could think of was that neoliberal politicians remind me of a bunch of junkies in a shooting gallery.

Making matters worse, of course, was that Patrick's cuts resulted from the actions of another bunch of neoliberal junkies in a much larger and more dangerous shooting gallery ... Congress. The minority Republicans have managed to stall funding a desperately needed extension of the enhanced Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage - which progressive analysts at the Mass. Budget and Policy Center called "a significant component of stimulus included in the federal Recovery Act" in their report"Preliminary Analysis: The Governor's Actions on the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget" last week. $374.1 million of the Governor's cuts are the result of this single reprehensible act by the Party of No.

The final cuts are devastating - especially on top of the existing cuts in the Conference Committee budget. All the more so given that there could be more cuts during the fiscal year if Patrick uses his Section 9C powers. And the way the economy is continuing to founder, it virtually assured that he will do so.

My junkie analogy works even better here than I intended - as I discovered when I went to Patrick's website to look at the list of cuts he just made. Next to almost every item in the long list of his line item vetos and a short list of outside section vetos is a single sentence - written over and over like the repetitive babblings of a drug addict, "I am vetoing this language and reducing this amount because none of the enhanced FMAP funds have been received from or committed by the federal government."

This language appears next to some of the most horrendous cuts to needed public services in 20 years - MassHealth Senior Care (-$6,830,466), Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disabled and Children (-$3,584,318), After-School and Out-of-School Grants (-$500,000), Child Care Access (-$500,000), Universal Pre-Kindergarten (-$500,000), Youth-Build Grants (-$300,000), Teacher Preparation and Certification (-$120,897), Foster Care Financial Aid (-$74,262), Mass. Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (-$65,127), Vocational Rehabilitation for the Blind (-$60,766) and many more. These followed by massive cuts (3.1 percent) to a public higher education system that has already been shamefully underfunded for the same 20 year period. $14 million in cuts to UMass alone.

And ok, if the FMAP money goes through, these cuts might be restored. But with the Republicans inexplicably ascendent, there's no guarantee of that. And many of the other cuts already made by the Conference Committee won't be restored no matter what.

So, one might justifiably ask, what kind of treatment program can we put neoliberals like Patrick - and most Democratic politicians at all levels of government - on to cure their addition to bad politics? Is there some sort of political methadone? Talk therapy? What?

How does one treat people under the spell of an ideology that dictates that the private sector can run every sort of program better than the government when long experience with this kind of boondoggle shows that extracting profit from government monies budgeted for service provision equals ... surprise, surprise ... worse service provision?

How does one remind such people that the "deficit" as flogged by right-wingers is a paper tiger, and that social investment by a government is well-known to produce a stable working-class and a growing middle-class who can then bulk up the tax base and stabilize government budgets in a happy virtuous circle?

How does one explain to such bought-off and/or befuddled corporate shills that we wouldn't be in the current economic crisis to begin with if we strengthened the regulation of corporations - and most critically, the financial sector - and TAXED them as they were once taxed; so that the public good was served over the private good?

Well as it happens there is a cure to what ails these erstwhile "progressives." It's called growing a spine, and remembering that government is there to serve the needs of the people. Not special interests like corporations.

And if neoliberals like Patrick can't change course towards representing the people's interests, then they must all be removed from office and replaced by real progressives who will do the job that needs doing.

I can think of one candidate for Governor that would fit the bill nicely. And she's not a dude.

As the head of a non-profit news publication, I must demur from saying more. But I think you can all do the math here.

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston