Balancing Oregon’s budget: The cuts we just can’t afford
Monday, June 28, 2010, 9:00 AM
Jerry Cohen, Robin Christian
It’s been said that a society is measured by how it cares for those in the dawn of life, the twilight of life and the shadows of life. If we allow the governor’s plan to balance Oregon’s 2009-2011 budget with 9 percent across-the-board cuts to stand, our state will fall tragically short of that measure. The irony is that the governor’s plan is likely to slow—not speed up—our economic recovery.
Why?
—Thousands of teachers, in-home care-givers for seniors and people with disabilities and child-care providers in communities from Ontario to Port Orford will lose their jobs, adding to our 10 percent unemployment rate and triggering new costs.
—Millions of dollars in federal matching funds from education and human-service programs will vanish from our communities and economy.
—Schools will be forced to cut hours, days and programs, further diminishing our children’s preparation to compete in a global marketplace.
—Small businesses across the state will shut their doors one by one because, after hanging on by a thread for the past two years, they can no longer wait for the recovery to come to Oregon.
—Thousands of working parents will lose their child-care coverage, forcing many of them to either leave children home alone or quit their jobs, again leading to costly ripple effects.
—Oregon’s lauded home- and community-based system of services for seniors and people with disabilities will be decimated, leaving our most vulnerable citizens without proper care, good choices or dignity—and sending many of them into more expensive nursing homes.
Across-the-board cuts might be awful but understandable if the budget shortfall had been caused by overspending on children, seniors, the poor and those who serve them. But that’s just not the case. The percentage of most of these services from the state’s budget has been diminishing.
The revenue falloff is the result of a recession triggered largely by Wall Street excesses and exacerbated by Oregon’s inherently unstable revenue system. We were shortchanging our kids and elderly even before this crisis.
Let’s be clear: The state of Oregon is required to operate within a balanced budget. We know that tough and lingering economic conditions require difficult choices, especially as the state faces revenue shortfalls, now and in the future. But these cuts and the devastating chain reaction they would set off in every Oregon community show us that there simply must be a better way.
Now more than ever, we need Congress to pass extended recovery-act provisions. Now more than ever, we need the governor and the Legislature to develop a better approach both in the short term by identifying less destructive alternatives, and in the longer term by reforming the kicker laws and closing tax loopholes and tax breaks. And now more than ever, we need to come together as Oregonians to preserve essential services key to our collective economic future and quality of life.
We must choose carefully to shape a tomorrow where Oregon prospers again.
Jerry Cohen is Oregon state director of AARP. Robin Christian is executive director of Children First for Oregon.
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