Arkansas should be in outrage

All Arkansans should to be outraged at the COVID-19 relief bill Democrats are pushing through Congress.

The anger toward this bill isn’t just because only about nine percent of the money helps those who have suffered under the shutdown of the economy in an unwise way of stopping the virus from China. The rest will go to Democrat pet projects.

In previous epidemics and pandemics, the people who are exposed or have the disease have been placed in quarantine.

This time, we quarantined the healthy — not the sick or exposed. Obviously it didn’t work.

A doctor who recently operated on my wife told us he got the vaccine and still got the disease. The government’s solution didn’t work for him.

To compensate people who have been unable to work, Democrat Members of Congress want to give people a massive $1,400 “stimulus.”

No, that’s not the main reason Arkansans should be outraged.

The real reason is much of the money in this bill would go to states and cities that have gone into debt.

The federal government will add that debt from these cities and states to the national debt and take if off cities and states.

Why should

Arkansans be mad about that? Because

Arkansas has something called the Revenue

Stabilization Act (RSA).

It is usually one of the last bills the Arkansas

Legislature passes. It prevents the state from spending more money than it takes in. In other words, the Natural State does not have deficient spending.

The RSA lists spending priorities in three categories — A, B and C.

Category A is composed of agency programs considered absolutely essential — think education, health and human services, and state prisons. Such appropriation bills are always funded.

The federal courts will not allow school funding to be cut for any reason. Arkansas participates in the Medicaid program and must pay the state’s share of that program or be kicked out of the program. Cutting spending to prisons means turning more people in state prisons out to return to a life of crime in many cases.

Category B typically covers expansion of existing programs or new programs that are needed. Depending on the economy and the amount of money that the state collects in taxes and fees, these programs are usually funded unless there is a serious downturn in the economy.

For example, when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, people were afraid to go out and spend money. Sales tax revenue dropped dramatically. When the housing bubble burst in 2008, the Great Recession it caused lowered sale tax and income tax collections.

Category C, the third group of spending legislation, is rarely funded. This allows a legislator to pass a spending bill for a project in his or her district and then explain to the voters back home that enough revenue did not come in to allow the project to be funded.

The state takes in its various sources of revenue and starts at the top of Category A and works it way down. When the money runs out, the state stops spending.

This way Arkansas does not deficit spend like the federal government. The RSA has worked for Arkansas since 1945.

The reason Arkansans should be mad is that the federal government is not assuming any of Arkansas’s debt because Arkansas has used good government to prevent such debt.

Places like New York, Illinois and, of course, California are deep in debt. Most of those getting bailed out are Democratcontrolled states. Democrats in Congress have wanted such a bailout for some time.

The federal government assuming state and local debts means governors and mayors are allowed to restart their overspending again.

This COVID-19 relief bill moves the massive debt from states with poor budget management to all American taxpayers.

Arkansas, who has benefited from good money management, will now be paying federal taxes to bail out states that have spent more than their tax income.

That should spark outrage with every Arkansan who will be paying for massive mismanagement in other states.