CPJ Article: Unite against the budget cuts or we will fail

We're in the current issue of the Cooper Point Journal. The article this time emphasizes the need for unity. Here it is:

We will unite against the budget cuts, or we will fail

By Benjamin Gallup and Evan Rohar

Every sector of spending in Washington State will be under attack during the coming legislative session. The budget deficit for 2009-10 will almost certainly reach $6 billion, while some say it could be as high as $8 or $9 billion. Legislators are now discussing a 23 percent cut to the higher education budget as part of their efforts to eliminate the deficit. Other large items on the long list of cuts are health care, social services, and primary education.

In the coming months, legislators will use “fiscal responsibility” as a rationale for cutting spending to programs that students and workers need most in a recession. Yet economists have said recently that fiscal restraint is likely to make our economic woes worse. The state needs immediate aid from the federal government to continue vital services as well as a progressive tax code which taxes corporations and the wealthy to provide a consistent and predictable source of revenue. This is, in fact, the “fiscally responsible” course. Our elected officials have not yet put forward an acceptable solution to this budget crisis, so we must organize and do it ourselves.

Given the task ahead, students, faculty, state workers, and indeed all citizens of this state must unite against the looming threat to our quality of life. We must build a state-wide coalition based on our common interests. This coalition will need to embrace a variety of tactics to accomplish the goal of full funding for all state programs.

Realizing the interconnectedness of each vulnerable program is the key to creating and maintaining a coalition of all the parties with a stake in this fight: students, faculty, and staff; state workers; and those dependent upon state social and health services. Perhaps most importantly, we must remember how the decisions made in the coming months will effect an already ailing economy, and therefore every person living in this State.

Last week, Governor Gregoire asked for a minimum $600 million from the federal government for infrastructure projects. At the same time, she sought a $600 million budget cut to higher education (which has since been revised upwards to $690 million). Addressing joblessness through a federal stimulus in one sector of the economy while laying off state workers in another makes little sense. We need a holistic approach to this economic crisis, not an injection of funds into one part of our ailing system while others are crippled. The government should not force faculty, staff, and students out of higher education just to seek the infrastructure jobs it is creating to stimulate the economy. Yet we as students cannot say to a laid-off construction worker who would benefit from a state infrastructure stimulus, “Our education is more important than your ability to find living-wage work.” Similarly, the government should not present the construction worker with two bad options: a good education for her child or a living-wage job.

We face a long struggle which could take us until the end of June and the deadline for a new state budget. We must steel ourselves and square our shoulders to the task ahead. Above all we must have faith in our collective ability to make a difference through organizing and mass action, as did those in the 20th century's civil rights, anti-war, and labor movements. Along the way, the governor and lawmakers will make concessions to groups within our coalition. We must build the strongest bonds of solidarity so that when one group gets what it wants, it does not just give up the fight for full funding of all our distinct, yet interconnected, needs.

In this economic climate, tuition hikes and layoffs of state workers should be out of the question. So, too, should a reduction in services to a growing number of people who need them. The federal government gives trillions of dollars in bailouts to banks and rich investors. Students and workers must unite to demand that the federal government fund our needs.