With the second session of the 24th Alaska Legislature underway, it's appropriate to examine why we are here and what we can achieve for Alaskans. To merely state that the biggest issue facing us is overspending is to state the obvious. Let's ask why and how this happens.
As legislators tend to their daily schedules, they are visited by legions of individuals and special interest groups. The vast majority of them want the Legislature to spend money on their particular program. Imagine the lawmaker - even if he or she comes to Juneau with a sincere limited government, spend-less philosophy - he or she is literally met and confronted on a daily basis by people who make dramatic claims that if their needs are not met it will be a great catastrophe. The pressure is enormous and difficult to resist.
So when I state with great certainty that we ought to use the large surplus from recent high oil prices to take care of debt obligations and place the rest into our reserve accounts or the Alaska Permanent Fund as opposed to funding even more government, many will agree. But then the inevitable process of special-interest pressure begins to take its toll, ultimately adding to our inflated budget.
We rank as the highest-spending state in the entire country. New Yorkers, represented by liberal Hillary Clinton, are taxed to an incredibly high per capita spending level. But Alaska outspends New York by three times!
We consume more than $8 billion a year from our operating budget - mostly social programs and the bureaucracy to run them - in a state with a mere 700,000 people. Alaska has the dubious distinction of having the most expensive government of any state.
It's my 12th session in Juneau. I have watched this process repeatedly a dozen times. It's time we acted rationally instead of emotionally. We should spend what we have more carefully and efficiently on the limited government we ought to have - roads, police, fire protection and schools. We should wean ourselves from many of the soft, liberal, feel-good social programs not prescribed by our constitution.
With this common sense plea to run government with an eye on constitutional restraint, and for courageously deleting the truly extraneous fat - government television and radio, tourism advertising and fish marketing, to name a few - we should move forward with developing important infrastructure.
To overcome the dramatic pleas of special interests is a long-term effort because each pressure group's program is practically of near life or death importance. My colleagues and I are inundated all session long with this. I throw down the gauntlet. Can you resist?
I have and will resist. Please join me. With this in mind, Alaskans would then be left in peace to spend more of their own money the way they want, not government. It's theirs after all.
Vic Kohring represents Wasilla and the Mat-Su in the Alaska State Legislature. He can be reached at Kohring@legis.state.ak.us.
