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Tough times and difficult decisions
By State Rep. Daniel Bosley
Every year, I have the privilege of writing a column here to let seniors know what is going on either in the state or federal government. We use this column to highlight our accomplishments and to give you good news. This year, if you have a 401k retirement plan, or rely on a government program, or even if you just read the newspaper, you know that, economically speaking, there has been little good news. We are in the midst of a world-wide recession that has dramatically impacted our budget and the services we can deliver.
In this present fiscal year, we had to cut about $1 billion out of our budget. That was on top of the $1.4 billion that would have been an increase in a normal year. On top of this, we raised taxes almost $1 billion, used $1.34 billion in federal stimulus money, used $1.31 billion from our rainy day fund, and used almost $500 million in onetime revenue. In other words, we had to struggle with a $6.25 billion dollar shift in the way we built a budget. That required cuts in all areas of state spending and along with many other line items, senior programs were hit. For example, Prescription Advantage was cut back and waiting lists were formed for home care services.
To add to this problem, even with all of our budget changes and increased taxes, we are facing a deficit in this fiscal year of between $600 to 900 million. We are struggling to find ways to close this gap as we face even bigger gaps next year. The Governor will have to make some very tough choices in order to balance our books this year, and we face exactly the same situation in developing next year’s budget. The problem will be bigger next year because we have less than $1 billion left in federal stimulus and state stabilization fund accounts. To date, we have used over $2.6 billion from these two sources in the present budget. We can’t spend more than we have in order to reduce the cuts in next year’s budget. That is going to be the most difficult budget that I have seen in 23 years. No one is going to be spared these cuts. All we can promise is that we will work to keep these cuts to a minimum and they will be fairly distributed. I also think that it is time to return government spending to its core mission. That is, in the words of the late Senator Hubert Humphrey, to care for the people “in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Now, so that this is not all bad news; let me end on a positive note. Even with cutbacks, there has been some good news this year. For example, the Commission on Grandparents has been meeting and will come up with suggestions as to how we can help grandparents raising grandchildren.
We also trained another 80 new SHINE (Serving Health Information Needs of Elders) counselors statewide, and they have counseled over 45,000 seniors this year. They also held 600 education sessions. Our nutrition program served over 1.8 million congregate meals and 7.1 million home-delivered meals statewide. And we are going ahead on the Consumer Directed Care program that empowers seniors to exert greater control over personal assistance programs.
So there is good news. And we need to be innovative and creative as to how we deliver services in these hard times. I can promise you that we will do our best to ensure we get other services back as soon as possible.
Daniel E. Bosley is State Representative for the First Berkshire District. He can be reached at 617-722-2370 or by email at Rep.DanielBosley@hou.state.ma.us. His blog is http://danielbosley.blogspot.com.