“The state has available cash that the House could appropriate to protect healthcare services impacted by the recent Supreme Court decision,”House Speaker, Charles McCall, said in a news release on Friday. “These monies would delay the cuts into 2018 or until a strategic budget solution is reached. It is important to note that the House Republicans will not allow these three agencies to absorb a $215 million cut.” Evidently, the house leadership is deliberately holding back those emergency funds to the Mental Health Agency, only as a strategic move to justify seeking higher taxes on the people. These last few days, thousands of the mentally ill and their loved ones have faced unnecessary anxiety from the news of impending shutdowns of mental health services to the mentally disabled. ODMHSAS Commissioner, Terri White announced those cuts in a highly scripted media event meant to cause political pressure, even if what she did was going to temporarily stress the consumers her agency is supposed to come to the aid of. |  |
McCall says that the state only needs to officially approve the shift of funds, similar to how they bailed out common education, last year. The only Option Speaker McCall seems not be contemplating, is sending revenue raising questions to a vote of the people of the state. Yet that is the route that the Oklahoma constitution spells out for orderly planning of fiscal options which increase the burden of govt. on the people of the state.
Legislators like McCall and his colleagues need to respect the electorate in revenue-raising matters. Otherwise he will reap the whirlwind. Call for the ballot questions now, and move on to the weightier matter of identifying the obvious fat to be trimmed. Especially the welfare given to the rich through the nearly $1 billion to higher education 'sacred cows'. A means-tested PAL grant matching plan would target the needier families and let the millionaire families pay the market prices for higher ed. tuition. But no one has made the case that it is the duty of the poor consumer to pay for someone else's college education... or even a small part of it.
Legislators like McCall and his colleagues need to respect the electorate in revenue-raising matters. Otherwise he will reap the whirlwind. Call for the ballot questions now, and move on to the weightier matter of identifying the obvious fat to be trimmed. Especially the welfare given to the rich through the nearly $1 billion to higher education 'sacred cows'. A means-tested PAL grant matching plan would target the needier families and let the millionaire families pay the market prices for higher ed. tuition. But no one has made the case that it is the duty of the poor consumer to pay for someone else's college education... or even a small part of it.
