The Fuck-It Budget: Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part Twelve

When you have no ideas other than ugh gubmint baaaaaaaad, and you're too ignorant and lazy to actually figure out how to fund public services in the most effective way, you just demand across-the-board cuts, demonize state workers and call it a day.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Gov. Matt Bevin on Tuesday night proposed increasing funding for beleaguered state pension funds by more than a billion dollars over the next two years,  finding most of that money by slashing funding to most state agencies by 9 percent.

"We cannot move forward unless we address the crippling debt that faces this state. And that's really the crux of what we're here to talk about tonight," Bevin said of the more than $30 billion in unfunded liabilities in state pension funds during a speech to a joint session of the legislature that lasted an hour and eight minutes.

Bevin's first speech to the legislature outlined a proposed two-year state budget that is true to his campaign promises to cut the size of government and address the pension funding crisis.

"We've got to take immediate action," Bevin said. "Because to continue to ignore our financial problems is no longer an option. It just isn't."

 Forty years of budget cutting, and repugs still refuse to acknowledge the facts that it always - always - hurts the economy.  Calling for cuts is ignoring out financial problems, which start with a state tax structure that subsidizes the rich and decomposing industries like coal and punishes working people.

Kentucky's not going to crawl out of its financial problems until the governor and legislature makes corporations and the rich pay their fair share of taxes - and pay back the billions they've stolen from actual taxpayers over the last 40 years.

Here's a prediction for you: when agencies scream that they can't cut their budget's 9 percent without shutting their doors, Bevin's going to tell them to turn the services over the private contractors, and oh, hey, look, here's a list of my personal billionaire friends who'd be happy to take that budget off your hands.

Because once state government is in the hands of corporate criminals like Corrections Corporation of America, those 9 percent cuts are going to mysteriously disappear while the cost of providing services escalates.

Welcome to Haiti on the Ohio.