Be Glad You're Not a Legislator

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Most of today was taken up with the budget debate on the floor of the Senate, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be finished today, no matter how late the Senators sit there. The Democratic leadership wants to present an amendment which will, in effect, be a substitution of their plan for the Republican plan. I doubt it will pass, but it’s important that the Democrats make it clear that they would have gone about fixing this budget mess in a very different manner. Specifically, they would have tried to blunt the impact on our most vulnerable populations and the education of our children.

There’s no way that I can see that there is going to be no impact on people with disabilities, the elderly, foster parents and the children they care for, or any other particular group, but some of these across-the-board cuts of 3.4% are so draconian that we may lose programs that save us money.

One example of this is the money allocated to drug and alcohol treatment programs. Although there is supposed to be only a 3.4% cut, in actuality, those programs will be cut by about 20%, partly because so much federal money will be lost without the state’s contribution. I can hear the conservatives saying, so what? Why should we be coddling drug and alcohol addicts? They made their beds; let them lie in them.

Ah, such short-sightedness!

First of all, drug and alcohol treatment programs rarely coddle anyone. Even in a fancy place like the Betty Ford Clinic (and there is nothing equivalent to it in Kansas), addicts are forced to look addiction in the eye and realize that the disease is ruining not only their lives, but also the lives of many people around them, especially any young children caught up in the situation. If you think taking stock of yourself and finding yourself completely wanting is easy, then you’ve never done it. No amount of comfortable bed and fancy board makes up for knowing that you have failed abysmally, that you are in a deep hole in all aspects of your life, and that there’s nobody but you to dig yourself out. Be glad you’ve never been there.

And most treatment programs don’t include a comfortable bed and even passable food. Many of them, in the first place, are not in-house programs but rather out-patient, where the addict tries to deal with addiction while still functioning in the every-day world. Out-patient programs are cost-effective in that it costs a lot less to treat the addict in such a way, but they’re not always addict-effective, in that a lower percentage of people treated that way get off addiction and stay off it.

Nevertheless, there are generally waiting lists to get into such programs. SB 2003-123, which set up a process for sending non-violent addicts to treatment programs instead of prison, has had very good success, but it could have been better if we had about 50% more beds, especially in western Kansas. About a third of the people who could have qualified went to prison anyway, because there was no treatment program for them outside of prison.

Surely, I don’t have to list for you all the reasons it is more expensive to have untreated addicts bouncing around society. Addicts tend to wind up on welfare, using Medicaid funds to treat their addiction as well as the other medical conditions associated with addiction, like AIDS, for example. If we can keep just one junkie from contracting AIDS from a dirty needle, we can save enough money to pay for treatment for 100 others. Addicts who are actively using also mess up their children, who wind up in foster care and mental health treatment, again often on Medicaid, at beaucoup cost to society. As we all know, the children of addicts are far more likely to become addicts themselves, leading to another round of expensive treatment and support.
For all these reasons, reducing drug and alcohol treatment by 20% probably will lead to increased need in a very short time.

But, you say, where ARE we going to get the money? The same arguments can be made for decreases in funding for education and elder care and SRS. You either pay some today or you pay some more later.

The trouble is, at the state level, we don’t have a lot of options. We don’t have any flashy programs like the Department of Defense that we can cut to the bone for a short time while we transfer that spending into the essentials. (Not that the Department of Defense is a luxury, mind you; I’m merely objecting to the multi-billion-dollar fighter jets and multi-million-dollar tanks that need servicing after a mile and a half.) Nor can a state government simply print money. And God forbid that we consider raising taxes!

My hope is that Congress will include help to the states in the stimulus package and will pass it soon. Increases in unemployment benefits also might keep the revenue intake on a somewhat even keel as more Kansans lose their jobs. People do pay taxes on unemployment benefits, you know, and those funds flow out of the hands of the unemployed into the hands of businesses where sales tax is collected. Both those factors will help the State of Kansas.

But they’re only stopgaps. We need solutions. People need jobs. I believe that the President’s focus on making the country less dependent on fossil fuels is the way to go for the next decade. I like the idea of people putting insulation in homes, installing solar panels on roofs, and erecting wind farms. It’s going to take a lot of pump priming, and there’s always the risk that we will give up before we get to that tipping point, but I think Americans are ready to put themselves to work making America better for everyone.

At least I hope so. In the meantime, the Senate is debating another amendment. It’s going to be a long night leading into another long day tomorrow. Be glad you’re not a legislator.
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