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Minnesotans should be outraged

To the editor:
Minnesotans should be outraged at the hypocrisy in state government.
The state is providing double digit pay raises for its elected department heads, such as 42 percent increase for State Auditor Pat Awada and 36 percent for Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, while asking state employees for a salary freeze for the next two years and eliminating the funding for crisis nurseries and the foster grandparents programs - both of which utilize primarily volunteers.
In addition, rather than directly deal with all its financial problems, the state is shifting them to cities and counties by significantly reducing local government aids.
Wouldnít it be nice if you could make your relatives pay your bills?
And look at the lip service to the promise of protecting the poor and most vulnerable; they are reducing funding for homeless families (a program that utilizes churches and volunteers), pregnant women, and the working poor.
It is one thing to ask us to share the pain of budget shortfalls created by over-aggressive tax cuts in a time of plenty and current revenue shortfalls, but it is another to undermine our ability for an economic recovery.
The goal of our state elected officials is to make us more like Wisconsin, Iowa or Michigan. Wisconsin has higher overall taxes than Minnesota.
Iowans have substantially lower per capita personal income. Michigan has slower economic growth, higher unemployment, fewer people covered by health insurance and poorer business climate.
Those states want to look more like Minnesota, at least the way it was four years ago. We may not be in the race to the bottom, but we are on a course for economic ruin.
The irony is that while state Republicans are preaching the need to stay within our means, federal Republicans are spending like there is no tomorrow.Ý And what have those strategies achieved: record deficits, the largest monthly loss of jobs since the last Bush administration, and the likelihood that if we invade Iraq, there will be a greater likelihood that we will be victims of terrorism.
It is time for us to tell our state elected officials to end these self-destructive economic policies.
Robert G. Walz
North Branch

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