ADF: What’s LEFT of the Constitution? (“Kill or Else” Edition)

“What’s Left of the Constitution?” is a periodic news digest featuring Alliance Defense Fund legal analysis of proposals, policies, and trends advanced by the federal government.  On a regular basis, this digest specifically highlights policies and actions that move America away from the principles of the U.S. Constitution and closer to the demands of the political Left, especially ones that threaten religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and the family.

Of all the historic buildings that house agencies of the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Hubert H. Humphrey Building would not leap to the minds of many. Though it appears to be just another concrete beehive, this gray monument to bureaucracy has become ground zero in a battle for the rights of Christian health care workers.

While the news media focus on the massive government spending plan and the closing of Guantanamo, a far-reaching constitutional battle is boiling within the walls of HHS that will have great ramifications on doctors, medical professionals, and health care in America.

Before leaving office, the Bush Administration put forth regulations providing protections for pro-life doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Now, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are trying to impose a “kill or else” regime in the healthcare profession by suing to strike down these constitutionally-sound and common sense protections. ADF and CLS have stepped in, filing a motion to intervene on behalf of medical organizations representing more than 20,000 pro-life health care workers.

Absent these regulations, several laws protecting health care workers employed by medical organizations that receive federal money were impotent and unenforced for years—allowing hospitals that receive taxpayer funding to discriminate against pro-life medical professionals. In short, these workers were one “wrong move” away from dire consequences for refusing to perform, or participate in, abortions…while the hospital continued to enjoy tax-funded subsidies.

Thus, without such a clause, the “right” to abortion—which is listed nowhere in the Constitution—is given preference over the right of conscience, the idea upon which our Founding Fathers based our First Amendment freedoms.

Let’s be clear what this means: someone’s purported “right” to abortion, under the umbrella of “health care,” would be elevated above a doctor’s right to refuse to perform one. Forget the Hippocratic oath (“first, do no harm”)—the ACLU and its allies wish to glorify abortion over all other things. This issue goes beyond abortion to the very core of individual liberty.

Read the rest, watch the video at: www.telladf.org/left

Occam’s Razor for AZ: Limp Budget Needs More than Stimulus

by Gayle Plato-Besley

If our economy seems limp to you, have no fear. This federal financial flat line is vital to the Donkey Dems in Congress.  They need the Fiscal Erectile Dysfunction (F-ED), in order to pop the pill- aka Stimulus Bill ‘09—Viva Viagra!

All of the politico palms will be good and greasy soon in this latest ponzi scheme, and there is nothin’ you can really do about it. Alas in AZ, we are all wimpy in the wallet area, back here where Janet used to lie.  So forget about drinking Kool-aid; get the lil blue pill for the hard times.

Where’s the romance gone?  The Ol’ West lured those stuck in the Ice Age back East: property sold easily and everybody was either buying it or brokering the deal.   Small businesses flourished, tax bases were strong, and we all drank $4.00 lattes.  We were young and strong, playing in the sun, and living for the moment of quick bucking.  We were so in love.

But the F-ED  and the AZ version don’t always need Stimulus.  Sometimes it just needs to be let alone. Sometimes the best thing is to slim down too.  Cuz we all know, when you get too fat, it’s just harder to see whatchya got that still works.

I’ve recently written of a need to help AZ by using lottery money in a new way. There was some clever finance schmoozing once upon a time to get lots of the money shuffled into transportation.  Yet, is there a parent out there who’s rather see Light Rail get a billion and us not even a port-o potty on the route?  Would we rather a bus stop with artsy seats over a school reading program or public healthcare for kids? Get real and stop this shell game.

 Some complained that I was jumping on with Janet and agreeing to sell the gold mine that is the lottery.  No.  We need to revamp and funnel the money brought in from this voluntary revenue raising.  If the Arizona legislature can yank back tax credits and change up mandated expenditures, it can revamp the statutes.  Get the half a billion dollars raised annually from AZ Lottery; while about half of that goes to prizes and running it, a good deal of it can be used in the ‘general fund’ manner and put forth for the ABSOLUTELY necessary programs.  Maybe we could borrow from it’s future profits, but let’s not sell it!

Occam’s Razor- always best in a slash

While readers may see this concept as simplistic or naïve; I say leave up to a 14^th century philosopher/thinker to say it: “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor)

SIMPLY PUT- We cannot find a quarter of a billion dollars ( the half after runnin’ it) ANY OTHER PLACE during this economic downturn.

 

 “The Arizona Lottery took in a record $473 million during the fiscal year that ended inJune.” (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/10/13/20081013lottery1013.html)

 

 

Let the people decide and put forth an initiative including a three point proposal:

1)     Lottery revenues are distributed through a general fund concept including a bulk of the money going to local transportation programs including mass transit.  We feel this is not the best use of the revenue in a budgetary crisis.   Public safety, K-12 education and healthcare are priority to all other issues.  Each area will need restructuring of expenditures and define critical programs.  

 

 

2)     All state programs submit new budgets showing cuts of a minimum of 25% of overall expenditures immediately.  Staffing costs are a bulk of expenditure.   Local groups can best determine their cuts, but no funds will be available until full compliance with new guidelines. All new budget proposals will be made available to the public before submission.  Projection of how services will be rendered under the new budgets will be delineated in public meetings and announcements.  Total transparency will help streamline services in the long run.  Recommendations to schools and public programs will be presented and include staff reduction, and a shortened work week where possible.  State-wide school summer closures of one month will be mandatory.  All agencies will revamp retirement and leave-based status of employees. All state agencies receiving state funds must stop all new programming not dictated by voter mandate (override or bond). All state directors or administrators will have salaries capped at 100K with no raises for any state employees.  Any agency receiving lottery revenue must submit accountability checks of how monies were spent and compliance of their scaled back budgets. 

 

 

3)     Add more games and revamp the lottery.  There’s been steady growth when there are big jackpots.  Review how to increase the sales.  Once again, this is a volunteer revenue generator.  Let’s make it work for us.

 

Federal economic stimulus plans should not include education spending

Students to protest at AZ Capitol tomorrow – on your dime

More than a thousand students from the University of Arizona are planning to rally at the state capitol tomorrow to protest proposed budget cuts. As the Arizona Daily Star reports, some will be getting class credit for doing so:

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/277572

That means they will be spending your tax money to go down to the Legislature and agitate in favor of taking yet more of your tax money. (Talk about taxpayer-funded lobbying!) The alternatives to budget reductions are either tax increases in the short term, or borrowing, which will deepen Arizona’s structural deficit and eventually result in heavy tax increases, with interest.

Meanwhile, ASU’s PR office has produced a chart showing that the proposed budget reductions would reduce the state government subsidy for a full time student by about $3,000 a year:

http://asunews.asu.edu/files/GF_per_FTE_history.pdf

Taking the estimate at face value, ASU has a point: to keep the subsidy the same in real terms as it was in 1989, today’s subsidy would have to be about $6,900. By 2007-2008, with heavy pushing from Napolitano and Crow, it had risen to $7,976. According to ASU, the proposed budget reductions would cause the subsidy to fall to $4,902 per full-time student per year.

But the relevant question is, Should students become more dependent on government over time? Or should students become less dependent on government over time?

Dr. Matt Ladner of the Goldwater Institute makes a similar point in a recent email titled “Eating Crow”: http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2498

Meanwhile, AFP Arizona is trying to put the proposed state budget cuts into perspective, with two new charts we have posted on our blog page:

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/arizona/blog 

The first chart puts the proposed reductions in the context of total government spending in Arizona. The second chart puts the proposed reductions in the context of total state spending—government and private—for the services in question.

Tax-takers in Arizona will be in for some tough trade-offs over the next couple of years—especially those whose budgets are not voter-protected. But it’s nowhere close to the end of the world.

What’s Left of the Constitution

What’s Left of the Constitution

AFP Arizona Calls Federal Deficit Spending Package a “Dangerous Temptation” for State Politicians

State chapter urges citizens to sign AFP’s national “No Stimulus” petition

The Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP Arizona) today urged Arizonans to use an online petition to oppose the trillion-dollar stimulus package put forth by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Obama Administration.

“The so-called stimulus package would not only harm the long-term economic health of the country,” said AFP Arizona director Tom Jenney. “It would also provide a dangerous temptation for Arizona’s politicians in the short term, by allowing them to avoid making some of the tough budget reductions necessary to truly balance the state budget.”

Resistance to the federal bailout is weak in the Arizona Legislature, where members are struggling to close a $2 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends June 30^th.  Even the budget plan put out by the Legislature’s fiscally conservative appropriations chairmen, Sen. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) and Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Scottsdale/Fountain Hills), conceded the political reality that Arizona would likely take a projected $800 million in federal grants over two years, if those grants are offered to the state.

AFP Arizona urged Arizonans to visit www.nostimulus.com and sign AFP’s national “No Stimulus” petition, which tells President Obama that expanding government and growing debt are not productive reactions to the nation’s economic troubles.  By visiting the website, online activists can also learn facts about the Congressional spending proposal, contact their legislators, and write to local media.

“We have experimented with large-scale expansions of government in the past, and each one coincided with economic failure,” said AFP president Tim Phillips. “We cannot simply tax, borrow and spend our way to prosperity.” 

Letter to a college student about Arizona’s higher-ed budget cuts

Yesterday I received a polite email from a student at ASU, protesting AFP Arizona’s stance in favor of reduced government spending, including large spending reductions in higher education.  My response is pasted below.  I also strongly recommend that everyone in Arizona read Bob Robb’s column in today’s Arizona Republic:

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/RobertRobb/44352  

For Liberty, 

–Tom

 

23 January 2008

 

Dear Ms. ________,

 

The short story is that there is no revenue available to sustain spending at the high levels established during the past six years. Gov. Janet Napolitano and her allies (including ASU president Michael Crow) put the state on a budget rollercoaster, with yearly spending increases double the rate of increase for population plus inflation.  Now we are in the downward crash phase.

My organization predicted this crash many times over the past five years.  It was pretty obvious what was going to happen, if you watched the spending bubble inflate.  Back in 2002, after a more modest expansion of spending, revenue crashed down to the prevailing population-plus-inflation line.  Beginning in 2004, it was clear that Napolitano, Crow, et al, were pushing government spending—including university spending—far higher than would be sustainable in the next economic downturn.  See this chart for a visual: 

http://www.americansforprosperity.org/files/azgenfundappropszeroscale.pdf 

Right now, revenues are actually below the population-plus-inflation trendline from 2003, but our problems would be far more manageable now, if the state government had restrained government spending during the last six years, rather than spending every dollar that came in, and in many cases, leveraging the ongoing revenues to spend yet more. 

In across-the-board terms, the crash in revenues means reductions over two years of more than 20 percent from peak spending.  But with large portions of K-12 and AHCCCS spending untouchable thanks to voter mandates (and I don’t mean “thanks” in the sense of gratitude), the spending reductions from higher ed will have to be even larger.  For most students, that will mean significant tuition hikes, and/or reductions in services.

 

You might ask, “Why not increase taxes?”  College students in Arizona pay tuition that is substantially lower than the cost of their education.  The rest is made up by subsidies funded by taxpayers.  Many of those taxpayers are plumbers, construction workers, and other persons without college degrees.  Or they are small business owners, struggling to stay open during a recession.  Any tax increase would transfer money from them to college students.  That doesn’t seem fair to me. 

You might ask, “Why not borrow our way out?”  Borrowing and using accounting gimmicks to sustain current spending levels would deepen Arizona’s long-term structural deficit, leading to future tax increases (including tax increases on persons who are not yet of voting age—taxation without representation).  That doesn’t seem fair to me. 

You might ask, “Why not use money from the federal government?”  Taking federal handouts would merely shift the burden to federal taxpayers and federal borrowing.  Federal borrowing sounds like the easy way out, until you start looking carefully at the free lunch.  Borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates, crowding out private investment at the very moment when the government and the central bank are trying desperately to promote it, and increasing future inflation, which is yet another tax increase on our children and grandchildren.  That really doesn’t seem fair to me. 

I hope I have provided an adequate response to your letter of protest.  And hang in there—it’s going to be a rough couple of years for everyone. 

Arizona can cut spending while improving student performance

By Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. 

 

Arizona Right to Life – Lunch with Elected Officials

New Pinal County Sheriff has refreshing perspective

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