Peter Cianchette is right. Maine certainly has a spending problem (BDN op-ed, April 6). And Maine, like many states across the country, can’t spend money that’s not available. In Bush’s most recent budget, Maine will lose more than $180 billion in federal funding over the next few years.

While Cianchette argues that “our economic problems don’t stem from a lack of growth,” it seems hard to talk about growth when Maine has lost the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the nation. People want to work, but in the face of record job losses, this administration continues to support sending jobs overseas. Ask anyone in Brewer, Lincoln, Old Town or Millinocket; outsourcing doesn’t help working families.

In the face of such massive cuts on the federal level, where misplaced priorities offer tax cuts to the wealthy while not offering real tax cuts to the 98 percent of Americans who deserve it, Yankee independence, along with Yankee ingenuity, will come in handy. In tough budget times, Gov. Baldacci and our Maine Democratic legislators have led the nation in developing creative solutions to the health care crisis. The cost of comprehensive coverage for small businesses rose 58 percent between 1996 and 2001.

While businesses want to provide health care, they often do so at the cost of new jobs and business investment. Health care is every much an economic issue as it is an issue of health. Where 135,000 Mainers have no health insurance, we should be proud Maine is making a long-term investment in the Dirigo Health Plan. As chairman of the Maine Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, it makes sense that Cianchette might overlook some of the record deficits this administration has dumped on states like Maine.

Tax cuts for the wealthy account for $2.2 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade, cuts that are responsible for 76 percent of the current loss in budget revenue. Both Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud supported amendments that would lessen these tax cuts to ensure more funding for veterans’ health care and increase funding to homeland security by as much as $2 billion. Instead, Maine’s veterans will face problems getting their disability and getting employment benefits. Local law enforcement stations that have benefited directly from block grants will see those grants disappear under the Bush administration. Yankee independence won’t provide veterans with disability benefits or firefighters with better response equipment.

Privatizing Social Security and Medicare will cost $1.4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates private insurance companies would gain an additional $14 billion from the new law, while the White House estimated they would gain $46 billion in the next 10 years. So why do independently minded Maine seniors still struggle to pay for their prescriptions?

These two initiatives – misplaced tax cuts and the privatization of Medicare and Social Security – account for more than half of the projected deficit in the next decade. If we distribute that money evenly, Maine taxpayers will shoulder more than $2,000 each, all for an unprecedented and irresponsible deficit.

Bush’s tax cuts were supposed to stimulate economic growth. According to Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, there should have been growth on the order of 3.4 million jobs between January 2001 and February 2004. Instead we lost 2.2 million jobs. According to a recent Goldman Sachs U.S. Economic Analysis, job growth in the current recovery has proceeded at a “slower pace than any other economic expansion on record.” We all know what that means for the average Mainer who has lost his or her job – a regular paycheck won’t be arriving any time soon.

And with reports of job growth in March, let’s remember these figures are helped by the end of a California strike and an increase in construction work after a February slump. The spirit of self-sufficiency means nothing when the rate of unemployment still rose last month, landing at a mark 36 percent higher than when Bush took office. Despite Gov. Baldacci’s efforts to persuade the president to extend unemployment benefits in Maine and across the country, 1.1 million unemployed workers have run out of funds.

Maine’s elected officials are working hard to balance the budget, provide for veterans, stimulate job growth through the Pine Tree Zones, and offer health care to lessen the strain on small business and the thousands of Mainers without health insurance. Bad federal policy is bad for Maine, and in these times, it will take all the Yankee ingenuity we can muster to put Maine back on track.

Dottie Melanson is chair of the Maine Democratic Party.