Essay: Cutting Benefits - 5/02/07

There is a bitter little joke going around in liberal circles, which goes like this. “I ran into my Republican friend Rupert at lunch yesterday, and he admitted the state budget crisis was all his fault.

‘What do you mean?‘ I said, suspiciously. ‘It’s true.’ Rupert said. “You told me that if I voted for Dick DeVos, that aid to schools would be cut. That Medicaid and foster programs would be devastated.

‘You told me that state services would be ruined by a governor who doesn’t know how to be a leader and a know-nothing legislature.

‘Well,’ Rupert summed up, ‘It is my fault.’

“I did vote for Dick DeVos, and all those awful things have come to pass. Less than six months later, too.”

I imagine the governor doesn’t appreciate that. And the fact is that Jennifer Granholm has violated two major principles of politics. You are supposed to, as the old saying goes, “dance with the ones that brung ya.”

As a politician, you never want to alienate your core constituency, the ones who put you in office in the first place.

But if you have to ask them to make sacrifices, if you have to break a promise, you need to get their attention and give them a complete and conceivable explanation.

The governor hasn’t done that. I don’t know who she has been talking to, but it sure isn’t the average Joe.

The governor talks as if everyone understood the crisis and what happens if we don’t solve it.

And I am sure that almost all the people she sees every day do understand it. But the vast majority of Michigan doesn’t. They don’t know how we got into this mess, or what the best way is to get out.

They don’t know because they aren’t economists. They are busy running their lives and trying to make ends meet. And they don’t know because their governor hasn’t explained it to them.

Jennifer Granholm was re-elected last fall with the support of nearly all the poor people who bothered to vote. She won the votes of the education community. As recently as her state of the state speech in February, she promised never to cut spending for K-12 education. Now she IS cutting aid to education, drastically. She is reducing payments to Medicaid providers, guaranteeing that some doctors will refuse to treat poor patients. And here’s her explanation:

“The Legislature is forcing these cuts. These aren’t my cuts, these are the legislature’s cuts.” That sounds like my six-year-old goddaughter blaming her big brother. I am not defending the Senate Republicans. But the governor’s job is to lead. What she needs to do is explain to the people the nature of the pickle we are in, why she is doing what she is doing, and what the options are.

And she needs to do so on television.

The time to fix this crisis is very short. The time this governor has left before she is seen as irrelevant may not be much longer.

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Comments

[mamma mia]

I have to disagree with your assertion that Governor Granholm has not made an effort to inform the public about the budget crisis. She went to five cities to conduct town hall meetings at the beginning of the year to get feedback and let everyone know what she is trying to accomplish. These town hall meetings WERE televised, for anyone who cared enough to watch. But who wants to watch a "political" discussion when they have a chance to watch American Idol?

Sorry, the onus is back on the legislature.