Point Austin: Behind the Numbers
What we talk about, when we talk about budget cuts
By Michael King, Fri., March 4, 2011
Yet as bad as the numbers were, the sense of helplessness was worse. The folks of One Voice Central Texas (a collaboration of several dozen human services agencies) are hardly firebrands, but their pleas had a desperate edge one doesn't generally hear at legislative committee hearings. What they were asking for was minimal: Find additional revenue (e.g., the Rainy Day Fund, federal matching funds), address the state's structural deficit, make sure the budget process is transparent. All of these proposals have been commonplaces of the Capitol discussion thus far, and they've even begun to have some effect – rational Republican leaders (a group which doesn't yet include Gov. Rick Perry) have acknowledged that an "all cuts" approach to budgeting simply won't work this time. What they propose to do instead remains uncertain.
What is new is the apprehension of real disaster – that this is not simply one more budget-cutting Lege session, but what is effectively a cavalier official flirtation with abandoning any pretense of a social contract. "We must fight these proposed cuts," said One Voice Chair Suki Steinhauser, "and not let go of our most vulnerable citizens." I asked her if she thought this might be simply another budgetary cycle, part of the give-and-take of every legislative session. "I've worked in this area for 25 years," she responded, "and I've never seen anything like this before."
Jobs and People
It hardly stops at human services, of course, and much of the public backlash has concerned the cuts to public education. In Austin the headline focus has been on the school district's potential school closures, and this week those were temporarily taken "off the table" by Superintendent Meria Carstarphen – a move that has had the unfortunate side-effect of making the prospective (direct) layoffs of more than a thousand teachers and other personnel seem somehow less dramatic. Not sure what the point is of keeping the schools open, if you're not going to provide teachers and staff – but that seems to be what we've come to.
Our current state leadership, of course, never tires of bragging about "job creation" (i.e, don't tax Amazon or they'll take their ball and go home), and yet these budget cuts threaten statewide employment on a scale that nobody seems to be contemplating. The Center for Public Policy Priorities ran the job-loss numbers this week, just for public education, higher ed, and health and human services. Here's a sample:
For Travis County alone, the public education budget cuts proposed in House Bill 1 represent as many as 11,000 lost jobs (public and private); in Harris County, 30,000; in Dallas, 18,500. The center estimates (based on standard economic multipliers) that statewide, the cuts represent as many as 190,000 lost jobs, most of those in the private sector. That's just public education – there will be similar consequences across the board, in the midst of a still-fragile economic recovery. Is this what the Republican leadership means by "job creation" – or are they indeed willing to throw the entire state backward into recession in the name of "fiscal responsibility"?
'Fight Like an Egyptian'
Not all the news last week was bad. The emotional high point was the public reaction in Wisconsin to Gov. Scott Walker's determination to bust the public employees' unions. More than 100,000 people rallied at the Madison Capitol, and the sense of solidarity was such that even the police officers (although exempted from Walker's cynical attack on collective bargaining) refused to carry out orders aimed at shutting down the protests. Whatever happens there – and it remains unclear whether the public outcry can, in the short term, stop the union-busting juggernaut – the GOP's overreaching has awakened a sleeping giant.
Austin got its own taste of solidarity a few days later, when several hundred union members and their allies marched on the Capitol to chants of "Workers rights are human rights." Perry was vainly bragging that Texas has never allowed the sort of collective bargaining by public employees (it was red-baited to death decades ago) that Walker is hoping to destroy in Wisconsin; Perry is also unlikely to point out that, partly because of unionization, both government and schools operate more efficiently and effectively in Wisconsin than in Texas. Walker is hoping to join the race to the bottom represented by Texas-style conservatism. All we can say to Wisconsinites is, be careful of what your bosses wish for.
Nevertheless, the spirit of rebellion is in the air, and not just in Wisconsin or Texas. It was joyous to march to the Capitol to the beat of internationally inspired chants along the lines of "From Egypt to Austin, we're all with Wisconsin!" As the AFL-CIO's Becky Moeller put it, "The fight is about the right of workers to a voice in their destiny."
That's something we need to remember as the political discussion reverts to what the corporate types like to call "the bottom line." In the end, the bottom line is not money: It's freedom; it's dignity; it's the right to have a democratic say in the decisions that directly affect our lives, our livelihoods, our families, our communities. That's what is really on the table at AISD, in the budget committees, and on the legislative floor. It's not about "cuts"; it's about people – and we all need to have our voices and our values in the middle of the fight.
The budget analyses are available at www.cppp.org. Follow the bouncing tweet at www.twitter.com/PointAustin.
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