Speaking out in praise of legitimate criticism

. “Baldacci spokesman Lee Umphrey … dismissed the House minority leader’s comments as politics ‘in an election year.'” – BDN, Jan. 19

. “House Speaker Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, suggested the Republicans were posturing in an election year…” – BDN, Jan. 21

. “The governor fired back Friday that it appears Republicans are raising issues for their fall campaigns.” – BDN, Jan. 24-25

It is a constant of political discourse that there will be disagreement on how things are to be done. Criticism of the ideas of people who share opinions in opposition to yours is par for the course. It is likewise a constant that observers, the media in particular, are given to criticizing such criticism, dismissing as being, at the very least, self-serving, counterproductive and morally suspect.

If the quotations above are any indication, the Baldacci administration and its supporters are hoping the public feels much the same, for it is clear they intend to make it official policy to dismiss any criticism of the administration’s actions as being motivated by politics, not by a sincere concern for the impact of those actions, or legitimate disagreement with the way in which they have been undertaken.

This is tremendously useful for them. It allows them to push forward their plans without any substantive justification for what they are doing and, as a side benefit, they manage to demonize the opposition as being more interested in being elected than in doing the right thing.

So are they right? Is there nothing worthy of criticism in the new Democratic budget or how it was put forward? Are complaints about this budget just hot air in an election year?

The health care providers I have heard from are not being elected to anything this fall, but they are concerned that they took at $58 million cut in the last budget and are being asked to absorb another $25 million in cuts between now and June. Cuts to services and longer waits for medical attention will have to become more common, as will higher rates for those with private insurance, or who pay out of pocket.

Are criticisms of cuts of this magnitude, targeted again and again at the same struggling industry legitimate, or motivated by politics?

I received a letter recently from a pharmacy patient who wrote that the proposed cuts to the drug dispensing fees for MaineCare prescriptions mean that my pharmacy may not be able to fill my MaineCare prescriptions anymore – they’ve said there will be shorter hours and no more delivery service Are the concerns of this patient a legitimate cause for criticism or more politics as usual?

A report in the February 1996 Maine Policy Review had this to say about the tax-and-match shell game that, though once discredited, is now back for a starring role in the administration’s budget: The roll call of unintended victims (of Maine’s tax-and- match plan begun in 1991) was compelling: $155 more per family for insurance coverage, $5 million in added Medicare co-payments for the elderly, and average 10 percent increase in hospital rates and serious jeopardy for the continued survival of 15 hospitals in nine Maine counties. And all of this as a result of the exact same hospital tax scam now proposed for the same purpose as back then: to draw down federal health care dollars to close the gap in the General Fund. Is it election-year politics to question the ethics of such deception, of such misuse of the federal funds we all pay for and to wonder at the wisdom of burdening our health care system with so unwieldy and unproven a scheme as this?

Is it legitimate to criticize the governor’s use of his rule-making authority to bypass debate and deliberation of these important issues, including cuts to social services for our most needy, by the elected representatives of the people?

Is it legitimate to have concern that the Democrats intend to bypass the Constitution’s two-thirds provision for emergency legislation by adjourning the Legislature three months early and put us in special session for the reminder of our work, rather than come to the table and work on a bipartisan solution we can all live with?

Is it legitimate to argue that a budget fix that is 80 percent one-time money is not a fix at all, and does nothing to address the underlying structural problems that caused the $112 million hole that has already developed in a budget that we just passed in June? Legitimate to argue that we have a Medi-caid system that is out of control, covering more people and costing more per person than nearly any other state program and growing at an unsustainable rate? Legitimate to worry that nobody seems interested in what is really wrong with the state’s spending habits?

Many years ago, Maine Sen. George Mitchell rebuked Iran-Contra star Oliver North by telling him to “please remember that it is possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the Contras and still love God, and still love this country, just as much as you do.” The administration might do well to acknowledge a corollary, which is that it is possible to disagree with them about how to balance the state budget and to restore fiscal responsibility, and to do so out of honest concern that what they propose to do is just plain wrong.

Many of us will work to be re-elected this fall, but that does not mean that our concerns, or the concerns of the thousands of Maine people who will be adversely impacted by this budget and who worry about our continuing failure to deal with fiscal reality, are without legitimacy.

Stephen Bowen is a Republican from Rockport who represents House District 63 (Camden and Rockport) in the Maine Legislature.