[Oklahoma City, OK, March 3, 2016] Republicans’ reckless tax cuts continue to bleed Oklahoma’s public education, healthcare, and public safety agencies dry with today’s announcement of an additional four percent across-the-board cut to agencies. Public education will receive the largest additional cut of $62.4 million, bringing the total since the start of the year to $109.2 million. With growing classroom sizes, abysmal teacher pay, and the elimination of programs and school days, how much more can Oklahoma’s teachers and students endure before Oklahoma says enough?
Instead of battling these real issues, Republican leaders, including Mary Fallin and Todd Lamb, are pushing to take even more money from public education through vouchers for private schools in urban areas while parents are still on the hook for a hefty portion of tuition and fees at those institutions that would have no public accountability.
Additionally, with the Republican-controlled legislature planning to kick over 110,000 Oklahomans off of SoonerCare, including 77,000 women, the additional cut to the Health Care Authority will result in many rural Oklahomans being cut off from reasonably-accessible health care services in their communities. Numerous rural hospitals have already cut services or shuttered their doors as a result of previous cuts and Governor Fallin’s refusal to accept Medicaid expansion, but that only seems to be the start.
The Oklahoma GOP continues to starve our state of vital core services through their mindless and irresponsible actions. The incompetence shown by Fallin, Lamb, and the rest of the Republican “leadership” is already costing this state new business and revenue and could now cost people their lives. Barely three months into the new year, and just one month into the legislative session, Oklahoma is well on track to end up in an even worse financial crisis than neighboring Kansas.
Oklahoma’s future is sinking and all Governor Fallin and legislative Republicans care to do is rearrange the deck chairs. It is far past time to halt additional tax cuts, cease discussion of elimination of tax breaks which directly benefit the middle-class as opposed to corporations, expand Medicaid, and get down to finding real solutions to these very real problems.
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If in the upcoming elections, our candidates end up saying things like “we support the Second Amendment” or some such “me too-ism” in an effort to appease voters who won’t vote for reasoned and progressive candidates anyway, then we will, quite simply, deserve to lose. We cannot be Republican-lite and expect to win, so even if we lose again, I hope our candidates will offer real and stark choices along the lines of the above article or the open letter from the teacher on Oklahoma City. If we lose, in short, we will lose as Democrats and as progressives, not as milquetoast political mannequins. Only through these bluntly stated choices (and we will need to do so by expressing genuine outrage at any other political candidate would dare to question the sincereity of our faith convictions) can we begin to re-build a party whose principles center around policies that give people a chance rather than, as the open letter put it, turn us all into illiterate drones working, in my words now, on behalf of the oligarchical few.
The republicans currently serving in Oklahoma government, from Mary Fallon, Todd Lamb,to all republican legislators have mismanaged, and failed miserably in governing Oklahoma’s funding. The funding failure by the present administration of 1.3 billion dollars is unexcusable, and to blame all this on lagging oil prices is ridiculous. Anyone who has lived in Oklahoma for 20 years knows that the oil industry has a boom or bust record. To try to fund this state by basing the majority of our tax base on oil is foolhardy, to further use sweetheart deals by creating tax credits for corporations, has only exacerbated their folly.
As a political party, the republicans have tried to purposely starve government of funding, supposedly to limit government. The problem with that thinking is that citizens need government for education, infrastructure, transportation, and many other services that support the growth of commerce, and jobs.
Oklahoma is not gaining new businesses, industry, or creating new jobs for an increased tax base. Further the children of Oklahoma’s education is being threatened because of unrealistic funding cuts that will hurt our future for years to come.
Maybe it is time to start a mass recall petition for gross negligence in office, and ineptitude. Because instead of seriously trying to fix the problems that they have created, the republicans are ignoring the problems, and writing frivolous bills that do nothing to get Oklahoma back in the black, adequately serving the citizens of Oklahoma.