STIMULUS BILL

 

By State Representative Don Humason, Jr.

February 7, 2009

 

The 5th annual Penguin Plunge is taking place at 1 PM, Saturday, February 7, on the Westfield green.  This chilly fundraiser benefits the Amelia Park Children’s Museum. Please come and support me and all the other plungers.

 There has been a great deal of coverage this week paid to the debate in Washington, DC about the national recovery/stimulus bill.  Since being proposed by President Obama, the bottom line of the massive spending bill has grown by billions of dollars.  At the time I wrote this column, the price tag was approaching $1 trillion dollars.

 Since I am only Westfield’s State Representative and not a US Congressman or Senator, I have no vote on that bill.  But as an American I am gravely concerned about the amount of money Congress wants to spend.  From what I’ve heard the bill is loaded with pork that would do little to stimulate our economy, especially in the short term.

 I’m aware that the President is trying to sell his plan to the states by including money in the stimulus bill for each state in the nation.  It remains to be seen how much Massachusetts would receive or what strings would be attached.  I would only caution my colleagues in government not to “count our chickens before they’ve hatched.”

 As a student of history I don’t believe our country can spend itself out of a recession.  I worry about the debt that future generations of Americans will be saddled with and how that debt will impact the private sector and delay our economic recovery.

 Here in Massachusetts it was a quiet week at the State House.  The House of Representatives did not meet in formal sessions.  I can only speculate that it is because new Speaker Bob DeLeo has yet to name the Chairs and Vice Chairs of the House committees.  Rank and file members of the House like me have yet to receive their committee assignments for the 2009-2010 session.

 We have already been informed that the House will be in a formal session next week to take up the traditional biannual debate on the rules that the House of Representatives operates under for the duration of the two-year session.  We are currently operating under an extension order using the same rules as the last session.

 These rules govern everything from how a session of the House is scheduled to the order for debate on a piece of legislation to the way legislators must conduct themselves on the floor of the House Chamber.  The Speaker and the House Clerk are typically the final arbiters of any rules challenge.

 As you may be aware, Governor Patrick released his list of 9C cuts and his House 1 budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2010.  The Governor’s numbers are very damaging to local aid to Westfield.  His budget contains a slew of new taxes and fee hikes. 

 He also proposes to use a significant chunk of the balance of revenue remaining in the state reserve account, the so-called “rainy day fund.”  While I would agree that because of the poor economy right now it would seem to be raining, experts are cautioning us that this recession will likely be a lengthy one so using up the reserves all at once puts the state in jeopardy for future years.

 Local officials like Mayor Boulanger, the City Council, and the School Committee members are put in the difficult position of having to continue to provide local services (education, police, fire, libraries, water, sewer, etc.) with a drastic reduction in state aid.

 Programs are going to have to be pared, vacant positions will remain unfilled, and, unfortunately, people in the public sector will likely be laid off.  We’ve already seen similar actions in the private sector with companies going out of business and employees losing their jobs.  I saw this week a report in the news that said jobless claims across the country had reached their highest level in decades.

 I heard a morbid joke the other day about recessions versus depressions:  “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.  A depression is when you lose yours.”  I don’t want to conclude my column on a down note.  I believe that there are opportunities in these challenging economic times for both the public and private sector.

 In government we need to use these times to retool and reprioritize the services we provide and how we provide them.  We need to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse, and redundancy.  Above all else elected officials, civil servants, and bureaucrats need to remember that our job is to serve the citizens of this city and state honestly, ethically, and frugally.  We should spend the taxpayers’ money at least as carefully as we would spend our own.

 

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