4 - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu JACOB SMILOVITZ EDITOR IN CHIEF RACHEL VAN GILDER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MATT AARONSON MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position oftthe Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views ofttheir authors. A fai grade for funding Mich. needs Race to the Top aid for education E ducation will be the cornerstone upon which Michigan can build a new economy. And while it's understandable that the state must reduce expenditures considering its current budget crisis, education shouldn't be on the chopping block. On Friday, Gov. Jennifer Granholm told legislators to stop cutting education funding. And she's right. To supplement edu- cation funding, the state should improve its application for the federal Race to the Top program, which could provide as much as $400 million dollars for education. To take advantage of the federal money, the state must be prepared to reapply for the funds in June - and the federal government should recognize The percentage difference in 6 /4 median weekly earnings between those with bachelor's degrees and those with high school diplomas. -A ccording to The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2008, the most recent data. BELLA SHAH E-MAIL BELLZ@UMICH.EDU * * '' .F Vet CO . C ika Selsyk wae,%# Av?2cBX'tiwa s a am d . ti'ab\e beavexs., yu o Every m/Il'lion dollars counts 0 that Michigan needs the aid. Michigan was not one of the 16 finalists for the federal Race to the Top program, which was created by the Obama adminis- tration. Final winners will be chosen later this spring. The program provides a one- time payment of $400 million for states that lack proper funding for education. In October 2009, the state legislature cut K-12 funding by $165 per pupil for the current academic year. Inan effort to avoid making another round of similar cuts in the future, the state sought federal aid. Granholm has said that she intends to reapply for Race to the Top aid when given this opportunity in June. She plans to review the applica- tions of the states that became finalists to improve Michigan's application. Cuts to education are detrimental to Michigan's efforts to salvage its economy. A new kind of .knowledge-based econo- my will depend upon the production of a highly educated workforce. But increased college enrollment depends upon a strong K-12 public education system. And though money doesn't solve every problem in edu- cation, it certainly helps to create a strong base for the education system. Recently, Granholm has criticized legislators for failing to approve school reforms that would help struggling schools become more efficient, according to a Mar. 5 Detroit Free Press article. She also pro- posed a services sales tax intended to raise $554 million for public schools. But until other efforts to find funds for education come to fruition, federal funding is the state's best hope. To supplement decreasing state funding, Michigan's public schools could benefit greatly from federal aid. The state should do everything it can to ensure that it's cho- sen to receive funding when it reapplies in June. It's Granholm's responsibility to rework Michigan's application to make the state a more attractive candidate for the federal funds. It's unfathomable that the federal gov- ernment ignored Michigan's economic need when it chose finalists for this round of the Race to the Top program. Michi- gan's economy - the worst in the coun- try - is more than enough of a reason to include the state among those receiving federal funds. The federal government should award Michigan the funds it needs to improve the public education system in one of the country's most economically downtrodden states. Michigan's public education has already taken too many cuts from the state. The federal government should encourage a strong education system to revive Michi- gan's economy, starting with providing funding. he harsh reality is we can't afford the government we . have," said state Senate Major- ity Leader Mike Bishop (R-Roches- ter) in the Detroit News last week. He was express- ; ing disappointment with the Michigan Senate's vote on Wednesday to keep A a scheduled 3-per- cent state employee ROBERT salary boost on the SOAVE books. Cancelling the pay raise would have saved the state $48 million. Supporters of the increase were quick to point out that $48 million is hardly a drop in the bucket in the face of Michigan's multi-billion dollar defi- cit. What they don't understand is that such a mentality is what puts a state in this position in the first place. Bishop is absolutely right: Michigan can't afford its government. Everything the government spends with revenue it doesn't have - revenue that comes from the pockets of suffering taxpay- ers and businesses - pushes Michigan toward insolvency. But while it's easy to make such an obvious point about the state's fiscal crisis, it's harder to say exactly what should face cuts. Seldom do recipi- ents of government funding believe that they should have their revenue reduced - it's always that other agen- cy or program that could use a reduc- tion. The Michigan Daily's editorials are often guilty of this, preaching the need for compromises and necessary cuts to state government - but abso- lutely not for the University or stu- dent financial aid programs! Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi (D-Marquette), who supported the pay increase along with most Senate Democrats, argued in a similar vein. He commended the vote, explaining that cancelling the salary increase would be "like saying to state workers we don't value your work enough to give you the raise you bargained for in good faith." Unfortunately, the problem is not that state employees are underval- ued but the exact opposite - they are grossly overvalued. According to the conservative Mackinac Cen- ter for Public Policy, state employee salary has increased by 26 percent since 2001, whereas private sector compensation has only increased by 15 percent. An even greater dispar- ity exists when employee benefits are factored in as part of a worker's total compensation package. And just as with salary, this disparity is growing. Between 2002 and 2007, the differ- ence between private sector benefits and public sector benefits grew by $2 billion. But compensation is just one area where state employees beat the private sector. Another is joblessness. While the private sector has lost 12.1 per- cent of its jobs since 2000, the num- ber of state employee jobs has actually increased in the same amount of time. Of course, when the only growing industry in a state is the one that's rev- enue base is compulsory, something has to be wrong. Reducing the pay of over-com- pensated state employees, then, is not only an economic necessity for a desperately broke state government but also a matter of fairness. In such harsh economic times, why should state employees be given raises when private employees - who are no doubt working as hard as ever to make ends meet - earn lower salaries, have dras- tically inferior benefits and face great- er joblessness? Now, I know I'm likely to receive a dozen comments on this article say- ing something like, "My dad is a state trooper! He puts his life on the line every day to protectYOU. Why do you want my familyto starve?" Let me stop you right there, hypothetical com- menter, because I'm actually looking out for your dad's job, too. That's because your dad's job is in trouble. The state is broke, remem- ber? But only the legislature has the power to reduce employee compensa- tion and benefits. This means that if compensation stays the same or con- tinues to increase, there are only two ways to afford it - the government must either take in more revenue by raising taxes (an unappealing option for the people of Michigan) or fire public employees. Pay increases are not an option with the state's deficit. Indeed, this scenario transpired last summer, when Gov. Jennifer Gra- nholm asked state troopers to take 37 hours of unpaid leave to make up for insufficient funding. But the police union rejected this compromise, leaving Granholm with no choice but to lay off 100 state troopers. Wouldn't it be better for public employees to compromise their exorbitant com- pensation packages rather than lose their jobs entirely? The legislature was not willing to make the right choice last week. But the gap between the privileged class of public employees and the rest of the work force is widening. How much further into debt must Michi- gan descend before the government wakes up to the reality of the unjust wages it pays its own employees at taxpayers' expenses? - Robert Soave was the Daily's editorial page editor in 2009. He can be reached at rsoave@umich.edu. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Nina Amilineni, Jordan Birnholtz, William Butler, Nicholas Clift, Michelle DeWitt, Brian Flaherty, Jeremy Levy, Erika Mayer, Edward McPhee, Emily Orley, Harsha Panduranga, Alex Schiff, Asa Smith, Brittany Smith, Robert Soave, Radhika Upadhyaya, Laura Veith The big problems with 'Big government, big debt'facts TO THE DAILY: I will leave it to my economist colleagues to refute the finer points in Alexander Franz and Anthony Cerrato's recent viewpoint (Big gov- ernment, big debt, 02/26/2010). But two errors are so glaring that they are obvious even to a psychologist. The authors say, "The Reagan administration oversaw annualized nominal GDP growth of 9.4 percent despite two recessions." According to SIMON BORST SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILYUMICH.EDU World Bank data, during Reagan's eightyears in office, the U.S. annual growth rate averaged 3.41 percent, reaching above five percent only once (7.2 percent in 1984). Of course Franz and Cer- rato use the term "nominal GDP," which does not account for inflation, and therefore does not reflect real growth. Secondly, in discussing the theory that increasing taxes lowers revenue, they refer to "Nobel Prize-winning economist Arthur Laf- fer." It's interestingthat the Nobel Prize website seems to have omitted his name from the list of economics laureates. Now there's a real laugher! David Winter, Ph.D. Faculty E-MAIL SIMON AT SIMKAL UMICH.EDU WILL BUTLER I Jim Bunning's 'finest hour?' y -,_ _. ' ' . tMC 3oc Sr tQ Objecting to the lack of adherence to the Senate's pay- as-you-go rules, U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) recently succeeded in delayinglegislationthatwould extend unem- ployment benefits and Congressional Omnibus Reconcili- ation Act health care coverage, more commonly known as COBRA, for 1.2 million Americans. His nearly week-long, one-man filibuster had the added benefit of furloughing 2,000 federal transportation workers. Congratulations, Mr. Bunning, no Republican has ever reduced the size of government and hurt more working class people in such a short amount of time. This must get Bunning some sort of conservative speed record - like winning the Republican Party Olympic gold medal. Despite the fact that the bill was eventually passed, and Bunning was forced to end his pro- cedural objections, this type of overzealous fiscal conser- vatism is exactly what endangers working Americans and furthers their disconnect with Washington. While a completely legitimate debate could be had over the economics of deficit spending and its validity today, what concerns me more are the contradictions of Bun- ning's actions. While stating that his "objections" - a Sen- ate procedural tactic he abused relentlessly - were fueled by a lack of revenue to pay for the unemployment aid, Bun- ning actually caused more money to be spent. According to Judy Conti, an advocate for the National Employment Law Project, Bunning just passed extra administrative costs to state governments, which will have to shut down and then resume their benefit programs. "Once the program is ret- roactively reauthorized, the federal government is going to send the same amount of money, but his own state govern- ment is going to have to spend even more money," she said in a Feb. 26 Huffington Post article. On an ethical level, Bunning politicized a conversation on deficit reduction on the backs of the unemployed. Kentuck- ians should be even more angeredby all of this, as the unem- ployment rate in the state is 10.7 percent, according to the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training. Their sena- tor, who should be working for them, passed on more costs to his own state government all the while ignoring the needs and desperation of Kentucky's out-of-work citizens. But an even larger problem .is that Bunning's actions embody a dangerous type of conservatism that exists today - one that is out of touch and doesn't care about the Ameri- can people. While American people were drowning and in need of government assistance, Bunning complained about missing a basketball game during the debate. "I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00, and it's the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they're the only team that has beat Kentucky this year," he said, according to the Huffington Post article. Although the Wall Street Journal knew all this information, it had the egregious audacity to declare in a Mar. 3 editorial that this was Bunning's "finest hour," as if denying assistance and aid to those in need is a part of the moral high ground. What Bunning has made me realize is that if you are unemployed and struggling financially, this extreme Tea Party-esque conservatism does not care about you. If you are unable to afford decent, adequate health care, this conservatism does not care about you. If you are a recently laid off federal transportation worker, this conservatism does not care about you. Bunning and the type of conser- vatism he represents would rather grind federal and state government operations to a standstill than have a sensible debate about deficit reduction. This comes at the expense of not Bunning and his precious little basketball game but those who depend on government assistance to put food on the table. I do believe that a reasonable conversation must be held about the deficit and that the pay-as-you-go rules should not just be a facade of fiscal policy. But Bunning's actions represent one of the most appallingly blatant examples of politics over people. While some may tout this ideological crusade as Bunning's "finest hour," it needs to be realized that fanatical fiscal demagoguery like this only harms the American working class that he claims to represent - not to mention the country as a whole. Will Butler is an LSA freshman. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. All submissions become property of the Daily. We do not print anonymous letters. Send letters to tothedaily@umich.edu.