The line about “lies, damn lies, and statistics” is commonly
attributed to Mark Twain, although Twain went out of his way to
attribute it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Nevertheless,
the Disraeli/Twain truism has been demonstrated by minds large and
small, and hearts pure and purely evil, countless times over the
years.
It’s currently enjoying an extended run at the Legislature in
Phoenix, having been brought back by populist demand.
The statewide Republican mantra in the 2008 elections, when Arizona
bucked the national trend, was not “change you can believe in,” but
“more of the same; let the Dems take the blame.” The previous budget
(passed in 2008) was a mess, having been hammered out by a popular
Democratic governor and a Republican Senate leader who was angling for
a run at a congressional seat. It was almost criminally overly
optimistic and would have been out of balance even without the economic
downturn. Still, it was passed by the House and the Senate, both of
which had solid Republican majorities. So the cries of “we’re just
fixing somebody else’s mess” ring hollow.
They gathered from the hinterlands and the suburban enclaves to take
up their holy mission of slashing and burning and sticking it to the
teachers’ union whenever possible. They definitely had some work to do
while taking on an ocean of red ink, but they weren’t just legislators;
they were True Believers. And so they decided to tackle the problem not
with one hand tied behind their backs, but with that hand hacked off
lest they get the urge to use it.
Yes, these people were going to tackle the worst budget shortfall in
state history without ever … EVER … using the dreaded “T” word.
I’ve spoken with a few of Southern Arizona’s new lions—Frank
Antenori, Al Melvin and Vic Williams—and they sound eerily
similar. “You can’t raise taxes in a bad economy,” they’ll tell you.
Well, I beg to differ; you can if you have to. I don’t think God will
get mad if you do. Neither will Ronald Reagan, and despite what some of
the legislators think, those two aren’t one and the same.
The average person out there with a job is doing OK—maybe not
great, but OK. They realize that they can’t be spending like a drunken
sailor for a while, or maybe not ever again, but that’s not necessarily
a bad thing. And they realize that paying taxes is a small burden that
one bears in exchange for living in our society. I’m betting that a
vast majority of them would be willing to pay more in taxes for at
least a year or two to keep the state’s roads from falling into
disrepair or its schools from decaying.
However, saddled with their unproductive no-tax-is-a-good-tax
stance, the legislators left themselves no choice but to try to perform
budget surgery with a macuahuitl (that’s that big-ass Aztec club with
the pieces of obsidian in it). When it was mostly done, they went
around congratulating themselves on how they had mostly spared
education. The number they kept throwing out was 3 percent, as in,
“That amounts to only a 3 percent cut in education spending.” Without
having to spend an hour going over the numbers, let’s just say that the
3 percent figure is in the category of “lies, damn lies, statistics,
and damn statistics.”
Even if that 3 percent figure were accurate, it wouldn’t be spread
evenly throughout the system. University administrators will drop
entire programs instead of telling all departments to make cuts by the
same percentage. Furthermore, with public-school administrators asked
to make cuts in their districts, it’s unlikely that they’ll start at
the top, leading instead to cuts in teaching positions, librarians and
support staff. Arizona’s kids need more teachers; keeping the number
static would be a setback, and cutting teachers would be
disastrous.
In a couple of weeks, teachers all over the state will be getting
layoff notices. School districts are going to lose people that they may
never get back. And the teacher union-hating legislators can chortle
like Snidely Whiplash.
Two recent developments should go a long way toward exposing this
Legislature’s character (or lack thereof). There may be as much as a
billion dollars in federal stimulus money available to Arizona
education, but at least part of it will require the Legislature to back
off of the universities.
The second thing is the State Supreme Court unanimously striking
down the vile, let’s-use-handicapped-kids-to-get-our-foot-in-the-door
voucher program that never should have been passed in the first place.
Already, some legislators are showing signs of taking their eyes off
the budget ball and veering off into some misguided effort to change
the state’s Constitution to allow this right-winger wet dream to become
law.
Vouchers are bad, and they’re not just 3 percent bad. They’re
unconstitutionally bad.
It looks like this gang of legislators may be able to boast that
they balanced the budget without raising taxes, but at what grievous
short- and long-term cost to the people they are supposed to be
serving?
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2009.