All those in need deserve support

By Steve Estes

We are glad to see that business-loving Florida Gov. Rick Scott finally has begun to realize that business won’t come to Florida if it has the worst educational system in the country.

Scott’s 2012 state budget proposal includes an extra $1 billion for education this year above last year, an increase in per student funding of about $70. With the approximate number of students enrolled in Monroe County Schools, the district should get an additional $630,000 in its coffers next year. That’s not enough to offset what the district will lose from other sources, but it helps.

The problem with Scott’s largess is that it comes at the expense of the state’s most vulnerable populations.

You see, to pay for the extra school money, Scott is proposing cutting $1.7 billion from the Medicaid coffers.

Medicaid provides health care costs for the very young, the elderly, the disabled and sometimes those who in many instances are unable to find work to sustain themselves.

So, on the one hand we applaud the Governor for finally taking education in the state seriously. He has finally come to realize what most of us already knew, that business interests won’t be interested in locating to Florida if they can’t offer their potential employees from elsewhere a top-notch education for their kids or a top-notch program for continuing education of employees.

But on the other hand, we have to paraphrase ESPN Sportscaster Chris Berman, “C’mon man.”

Using the most vulnerable members of a society as a lever upon which to balance a budget shows very little in the way of compassion for those who, either because they haven’t lived long enough to be able to vote, or have lived so long that they need our help, just shows a lack of class.

Scott has been adamant that as tax revenues continue to fall, the only way to get them back up is to continue to cut taxes for corporations, many of whom pay little tax to start with. Instead of doing anything to raise tax revenues, Scott tries to use the old, tried-and-true, yet unsuccessful method of giving money back to the folks who need it the least in the hopes—hopes—that they’ll return it to the people who need it in the form of jobs.

It hasn’t worked yet. It probably never will.

Yet every time we have a budget shortfall under this Governor, he wants to take the very subsistence from those most in need.

There are thousands of sales tax loopholes in the current Florida code. Closing half of them would skyrocket state revenues. Closing two-thirds of them would skyrocket state revenues. But it would also mean that corporate entities would pay the same tax rate on many of their purchases and sales as the regular person, or the small business struggling under those same tax codes.

But after all, corporations are people too and need tax relief.

Scott has the option to propose that the state jump on the internet tax bandwagon, whereby on-line shoppers would pay state sales tax for items they buy from Florida firms, leveling the playing field for Florida’s millions of consumers who don’t shop via the internet.

But none of these tax-increasing proposals warrant the Governor’s attention, proposals that would still be passed on to the consumer, and not harm his precious corporate buddies, and result in the state being able to fund its moral obligations to our young, our elderly, our disabled and those we have sent to the unemployment line by bad tax policies over the last decade.

Oh yes, and the Governor also plans to send another 4,500 state workers to the unemployment line, adding to unemployment numbers still among the highest in the country.

There isn’t much more of Scott’s budget balancing act we can take.