“This legislative “work day” is a play day for a pay day! It’s a bad joke, where the punch line is that lawmakers are coming back to be wined and dined by lobbyists, while the taxpayers pay their hotel bills and mileage. All this so that House Republicans can say they worked for 30 days instead of 29. Most Alabamians work far more than that! And unlike our legislature, most Alabamians also finish the job they were hired to do!
For three years, legislators have known this budget crisis was coming. They avoided it from 2012 until now by borrowing almost a half-billion dollars from the state’s savings account. Now that money has run out, and they still can’t come up with solutions. Instead, they are more interested in playing the blame game. But this time they can’t blame Democrats or Obama, so the House Republicans want to blame the Senate Republicans and the Senate Republicans want to blame the House Republicans. The truth is the entire Republican leadership is to blame because none of them did the only job they are required by law to do: pass a General Fund budget!
The people of Alabama deserve better than a “do nothing but blame everyone else” legislature. The people certainly shouldn’t have to foot the bill for this bogus “work day” or the special legislative session we will now have to have because the Republican leadership couldn’t even convince a majority of Republican legislators to support a plan.”
Nancy Worley is the Chairwoman of the Alabama Democratic Party. She spent more than 25 years as an educator in the Decatur public school system, and is a former Secretary of State and former president of the Alabama Education Association.
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