2006
Week 11
March 10, 2006

Hi

Another precious week gone. We blew one day. Argh. More on that later.

The major birth pangs were for our budget triplets. Three bills, which bring our budget up to speed for one more year, are now showing life.

Our budget increase for next year remains about 7.3%. This is not out of line, in spite of pot shots from a few campaigners. We have averaged 4% increase for the last five years, while the increased revenue averaged 5%. The statistical problem is that in the downturn years we raided cash funds to keep a few essential services going. Now we are adding the services back to the budget. I found three basic programs which we cut two years ago to trim 4% from the budget. They are restored. Meanwhile, public assistance has gone up every year -- more in the tough years, as is natural. In summary, I am proud of what we have done. We have met tough times, helped desperate people and still produced a solid budget that few can challenge. O, they do talk, from both the ‘spend less’ and ‘spend more’ sides. But they did not find any real changes to make.

Interesting to me was that of all the amendments from the floor seeking to change our committee product, only one was to reduce funds. It was a one-time side issue. The others (which were successful) were mostly on services to people who would cost us more if we did nothing: a Native American resource person, to steer more students into productive life careers; a resource person for Native American children and youth, to reduce future alcohol and drug use; funds for prescription drugs for HIV/Aids; and increased preventative health care for low income women in rural areas. The total of these programs will cost each tax payer 93 cents per year. We may add rehab services for prostitutes, with a focus on those who are both mentally ill and drug addicted. The cut (funding of a public foundation) saves $3.

The "excitement" chewed up two days actually. Worse, it was not really about the budget. One day was spent arguing about abortion attitudes and the other was in groaning about the deceit in the first day. O my. This feels like wasted time when so many critical bills are pushed aside, but it is not. We must negotiate our differences. We have differences of opinion, which I celebrate. We usually respect those differences. But when a challenge shakes our trust in one another we simply cannot go forward.

Names are a distraction, so I will omit them. One senator moved to amend the language (but not the $$$) in a budget section which deals with health services to low income women. He said his purpose was to spread the services from 14 key clinics, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha, to the rest of the state. (The structure of who gets served is from the department, not from our statutes.)

Another senator challenged his amendment, saying the first man had only one issue: the Catholic version of Right to Life. He alleged the amendment had to be a way to ‘help’ Right to Life by cutting Planned Parenthood or by keeping poor women away from contraceptives or by diluting family planning consultation. The first senator vehemently denied this, said his only motivation was to get services to women in rural Nebraska. Three other senators went after him, saying rural health had never been his issue and he was deviously trying to hurt someone. Is this abortion related? Again, very strong denials to each question.

I was beginning to feel sorry for the man, though he certainly brings this suspicion on himself. I took him at his word that he was feeling the pain in small town clinics. I became a little suspicious when he resisted the offer to add $$$ so that small towns could be served without taking away from urban clinics. I spoke in the debate, for a committee policy, saying that we do not add intent language to the budget bill unless there are $$$ to go with it. We soon had competing complicated motions, one adding 20% and the other 40% to the funding. The governor told the Speaker he would not veto an increase. We adopted the 40% boost, to better serve rural clinics.

Two days later we opened our papers to find that a reporter received a copy of an email memo the ‘amending’ senator had written, to a very few, in which he said the only point to his proposed amendment was to take money away from the Planned Parenthood clinic (which is one of the 14 clinics presently receiving funds). Most of the clinics are public health and a few are large, so the minor percent reduction to the Planned Parenthood facility would have been quite small. But a cut.

He wrote in the memo that he found it "insulting" that any money went to Planned Parenthood, even though none of it could be used for abortions. He said his amendment would cut them and asked people to pray that the amendment would prevail.

Well, unholy heck broke out in our session, with 20 to 30 speeches and a high level of passion. He had plainly, repeatedly, lied to us. I feel my integrity is my most valuable trait. It is sad to see that compromised in any one. The hurt about the room was tangible. (On the side, what strange mental state causes one to put damning evidence in writing?)

Abortion is an emotional issue, partly because we shout instead of talk about it. I am anti-abortion, as is every person I know. Life is to be treasured. However, it is not the highest value and our failure to recognize and discuss that clear fact is the base cause of all the shouting and name calling. Freedom is a higher value. We treasure freedom of speech, of worship, of thought -- as higher than life -- or we would not send our young to foreign countries to give up their lives in order to protect our freedom.

I voiced strong objection to the demonizing of Planned Parenthood. The concocted stories about what they and I hold dear is also a question of integrity. I have often asked for any who will join with others to help reduce the number of abortions. Planned Parenthood, the only organization to respond, does more to reduce the number than any other group I know. They do it, literally, through ‘planned parenthood.’ That involves contraception, to which some have religious objection. I respect that. I wish Planned P. did not provide access to abortions, but I respect that someone has to if we are to honor the painful decisions in the above heirarchy of values. When young women were referred to me, I have never advised abortion. Picking options for someone would be terrible counseling. More important, we must get past abortion as a solution for our failure to talk and think.

I, leaders in Planned Parenthood, and many citizens yearn for the day when there are no abortions because there are no unwanted conceptions. If we would each use our focus to reduce abortions, instead of demonizing people with differing approaches, we could make dramatic change. The enemy is not a group. The enemy is us.

Hang in there.

Lowen

Technical details. My website has back issues of all past newsletters. If you have missed any, look at: www.lowenkruse.com. Also, on the chart of tax rankings, my webmaster made that into an html table, so if anyone wants to copy it off for class or distribution, go to the web. I will update the figures this summer. The ‘Governing’ sourcebook has all of the info for every state: www.governing.com/source.htm -- you will also find there the fiscal year for which the chart rates the states. Dates vary from 2002 to 2004. The source for the total tax, for example, is U. S. Census bureau, FY 2002. Competing raters will sometimes give more recent figures, but they have a few figures which are projected from previous years. It is a long tedious process to get every state's statistics for each category. In Nebraska it takes us a year just to get our own figures. Taxes and fees are paid to counties, cities, and a wide variety of state agencies. Federal funds can go anywhere.

Did you note that we Nebraskans collect taxes (state and local!) at the rate of $3,077 per capita but we spend at the rate of $7,231 per capita? What a deal. Getting that second figure takes tedious wizardry, since no state has a single treasury and all those governmental units do not report what the Feds give them. That is why projection/guessing is used on more recent years and why you can go looking for, and find, different ratings.

Finally, "Governing" -- which is completely neutral -- reminds us in the forward that this is a measure of input, not output. It accounts for taxes collected and budgets funded, but not what the results were for that year, or more important, what will be the tax effect five years from now.