Thread: Arizona Governor: State fiscal crisis unparalleled dimension

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer: "We face a state fiscal crisis of unparalleled dimension"

If you did not know Arizona was having immense budget problems, you do now. Here is Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on the Arizona Crisis of "Unparalleled Dimension".

Dear Fellow Arizonan,

We face a state fiscal crisis of unparalleled dimension – one that is going to sweep over every single person in this state as well as every business and every family.

That is why I held an emergency cabinet meeting yesterday morning where I outlined for our state’s elected leaders and business leaders the ills our state faces. As I told them yesterday, we ARE faced with some of the worst days in our 97-year history.

We can debate how we got here, but we CANNOT remain paralyzed in our efforts to address the situation. We must set aside partisan politics and face the problem head on.

So here’s the TRUTH:

* The state has a budget deficit for the current fiscal year of $1.5 billion.
* Next fiscal year, 2011 -- a budget year that begins in just six months -- is even worse. Next year’s budget deficit stands at $3.4 billion. As of today -- right now, that MUST change.

This problem did not happen overnight.

* Five years of spending nearly doubled state government.
* The economic recession has reduced state revenues by almost 40 percent in just 3 years.
* Population growth in school children, university students, health care and welfare populations and inmates in our state prisons has fundamentally ruled out simplistic solutions like rolling the state budget back to levels from five, six, or more years ago.
* Federal and voter mandates prevent us from touching nearly two-thirds of the state budget.
* And procrastination, denial, and lack of will have allowed these problems to fester.

We must solve these problems and we must solve them now. More than calling for cooperation, today I had state government implement various emergency measures meant to ensure Arizona’s fiscal solvency. Among them:

* I ordered the Arizona Department of Corrections to return to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICEâ€

Building retirement homes with illegal workers has proved to be detrimental.

Was it that hard to see?

Where are the bankers now?

Now the citizens of Arizona are left holding the bag.

This is the most reasonable admission of a huge budget problem by any governor to date. However, the governor fails to point out the role of unions, pensions, and bloated government bureaucracy in the mess.




Actually, I don't believe that she failed to mention it....I believe she wisely chose not to.

What has happened every single time specific causes for budget crisis....anywhere.....have been mentioned?

All of those "causes" have turned it into a platform to go on the defensive and attack the person(s) who dared to bring up the subject, start flinging around their denials, false accusations of political, partisan, and race based motivations, blah, blah, blah. All of this invariably followed by an endless stream of hearings, reviews, reports, polls, studies, etc. until they have caused sufficient disruption to distract from the issue.

And, nothing is ever resolved.

I think she pretty much said it all right here:

We can debate how we got here, but we CANNOT remain paralyzed in our efforts to address the situation. We must set aside partisan politics and face the problem head on


And I think she's right. We all KNOW how we got here....even those not mentioned by name know it. She just took resolved action and didn't leave any room for them to argue with her about it