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Senate President Burns Disappointed by Budget Vetoes
By Howard Levine
GOPUSA News
September 15, 2009
Senate President Bob Burns spoke at the Legislative District (LD) 7 Republican meeting. He was talking primarily about the budget issues facing state government. He said that House Speaker Kirk Adams and he have worked with Republican legislators to pass five budgets so far this year. Unfortunately, Governor Brewer has vetoed significant parts of each budget. The current budget, Senator Burns said, still has a deficit of $3.5-4.0 Billion that has to be fixed with spending cuts. There are no more budget gimmicks left to use to fix the state's budget problems.
Burns expressed disappointment with Governor Brewer's vetoes of the budgets â€" particularly the latest budget. In fact, Bob Burns and Kirk Adams have written a letter to Governor Brewer stating that they take issue with the line item vetoes that increased state spending as the constitutional purpose of line item vetoes is to cut government spending rather than increase it. Also, there was a policy item the governor used a line item veto on which is unconstitutional. Burns and Adams stated in their letter that they will not be filing a lawsuit, but want the governor on notice about their concerns.
In response to a question about how line item vetoes could cause a spending increase, Burns said that budget bills were crafted with provisions that had current funding as a line item and reductions as separate line items. There had been an assumption that a Republican governor could be trusted to not line item veto budget cuts, but that was not the case. He said that future budgets would have specific amounts without any line item containing a reduction in order to prevent problems like this next year. That is, the reductions would be incorporated into the amounts on the budget bills without extra lines containing the reductions.
Senator Burns as well as the LD7 legislators all expressed frustration with Jan Brewer's vetoes. They did say that even though Brewer is currently not very popular with legislators because of strong disagreements over budget issues, it is critical that Republicans support the Republican nominee for governor. Regardless of any disagreements with the Republican nominee, that person will be much better for Arizona than Terry Goddard, the presumed Democrat candidate. In addition to signing many Republican bills other than the budget, Jan Brewer has, as a Republican, impacted Arizona through appointments to state offices. A Democrat as governor will not sign laws that are pro-life, pro-school choice, or pro-gun owner rights or appoint public officials who will uphold our values.
Copyright 2009 GOPUSA News. All rights reserved.
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