[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxr_wcKfNI[/youtube]
“And were walking.”
Okay, for over a month the media has been blabbing about the governor making 10% cuts across the board, and guess what he did today?
Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s proposed budget would cut at least 10 percent from virtually every corner of state government.
I just wish for once SD Republicans would be a bit more mysterious.
The 10 percent cuts to K-12 education and Medicaid providers are 5 percent higher than what Gov. Mike Rounds proposed before leaving.
Oh, let’s cut education and healthcare. Goody-Goody. Because, godammit, during a recession nobody deserves doctors and books, that’s silly talk. In fact, this would be the time to increase those two expenditures by 4x and cut slush funds like tourism, FTE’s and no-bid contracts.
But hey, dumb, sick people work cheap, contractors who donate to gubertorial campaigns do not.
Dennis Doogard. Nothing new here, please move along.
At least Daugaard is a man of his word, and at least he isn’t cherry picking his favorite groups.
Each and every state department can make a case for needing more and more money, so across the board cuts are the ONLY fair and equitable way to do things.
We can’t continue to have budget deficits, and we can’t wait for a rainy day to solve our problems. Say what you will about Daugaard, but he is making the tough and not very popular decisions that need to be made.
Now if only the legislature would follow through… but we all know that won’t happen.
Personally, I just think his cutty-cuttster idea is just a ruse. He can later say, “I advised the state legislature cut everything by 10% but they didn’t want to do that so I wash my hands of it.”
Is cutting everything 10% fair? Sure, I guess we can look at that way, but I think a responsible governor and government looks at the budget line by line. There is probably some stuff that should not be cut at all and some stuff that should be cut by 100%. But that of course would require them to do their job.
cut education and health care but to keep giving money to the state fair, the state hall of fame, cultural center. I was told once by a legislators this cost us over $3 million a year.
If this state wants to make some money, tell Thune, Johnson, Noem that we want the sale tax money that the internet companies have been pocketing for years. It would do 2 things, it would help put sales back in our SD stores and bring in over $4 million minimum in tax money.
Well I believe Daugaard’s statement was there would be an across the board 10% cut, but then some specific areas will be looked at for potentially even more. That means non-essential services could see their budgets slashed and other pet projects de-funded.
Nobody said it would be easy, but there is always a special interest group out there who can defend each and every penny spent on each and every state program, so it becomes hard to tell who to believe.
Obviously if our last governor would have made suggestions to cut smaller amounts, we might not find ourselves in this budget deficit area we are now… so to some degree Daugaard has to clean up the mess created by past administrations.
We all know the Dems won’t support his plan because he isn’t a Dem, and we know some of the Reps will have their own ideas or will serve districts where they don’t want their pet projects cut, so expect to see some shuffling over the next few months.
Oh, I think Dems have been TOO supportive of the SD GOP’s budget cuts in the past and present. But like I said to a Republican friend recently, they are all cut from the same clothe, can we expect change?
They can raise the tax rate to buy a railroad or to create a loan fund for business but cannot fund education and medicare. This could have a very negative effect in the long run. No wonder the young people leave whenever they get the chance.
South Dakota is running a $100 million deficit.
KELO reports that Sanford just gave $100 million to the hospital. (again)
ONE person can afford to give away as much as the entire deficit.
How obvious do you need to get?
TAX THE RICH.
Randall I agree.
I am also wondering how much his trip around the state to talk about the tax cuts is costing the tax payers.
T. Denny planted his seeds here for a reason. Tax freedom.
I’m a teacher. Yesterday at lunch, several staff were bemoaning the threatened 10% cut. I finally had heard enough, looked around the table and said, ‘Those of you who voted for Daugaard have no one to blame but yourselves. He campaigned on this. Why are you surprised? That’s what you get when you vote Republican.’ You could have heard a pin drop.
I thought all teachers were Democrats 🙂
As Jack Billion said in our last podcast, South Dakotans have a tendency to vote against their own interests.