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Letter: Bills passed in first 100 days ‘punch in gut’
Op-Ed · April 27, 2017
This Iowa 87th Legislature feels like a punch in the gut.
Collective Bargaining dismantled for public workers (except, mysteriously, for fire and police), curtailment of worker’s compensation, restricted local control of minimum wage, increased tuition at community colleges and state universities, cuts to early childhood education and preschool, reduced funds for victims of domestic abuse, job training and Iowans with disabilities, reduced access to affordable birth control and the closing of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. This is what happened in just 100 days of Republican control.
These same Republicans argue these cuts were necessary because there just isn’t the money. But there was. In 2013, $500 million in tax cuts to corporations have resulted in today’s deficit. When he initially made these cuts in 2013, Brandstad released a statement in which he claimed that the tax relief bill would “put more money in the pockets of Iowa families and make it easier for Iowa businesses to invest and grow in our state.”
But these cuts have ushered Iowa from an era of surplus into one of deficits – deficits which, in turn are motivating the draconian cuts approved in the recent budget.
These tax cuts now join the line of other state and national tax cuts whose promise of prosperity is for all when, in the end, they benefit the few and the wealthy. To believe otherwise is merely magical thinking. Not much in Iowa feels very magical these days.
Jennie S. Schmidt
West Branch
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