Each year, millions of Americans nationwide suffer from a lack of job security.

These individuals still have money in their wallets, hold steady, well-paying jobs, and now worry that the end of this recession may soon be on the horizon.

Do you feel like the economic downturn could be doing more to effect your quality of life on a personal level?

Well, fear not pessimists of the world, for Governor Jan Brewer is hard at work assuring that the worst is indeed yet to come for the State of Arizona.

The Pew Center on the States released an executive summary earlier last year, “Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril,” which gravely labels Arizona as the second-closest state to economic collapse.

The report reads, “As the economic news grew bleaker and state revenues sank during the past two years, Arizona’s lawmakers relied on one-time fixes to balance its budget instead of making long-term changes … At this writing, policy makers still had not decided how to bridge a $1 billion gap in the current fiscal year’s budget.”

To counteract this, Gov. Brewer has proposed roughly $97 million in cuts to state programs, including the elimination of KidsCare, a health-care program for 47,000 children from low-income families and the phased closure of 21 of Arizona’s 30 state parks.

The plan also calls to narrow eligibility for Medicaid, saving $382.5 million next year but losing twice that in federal stimulus funds thereafter, at the cost of 310,500 people losing medical coverage.

Worse yet, the governor plans to end a state program that currently provides 17,400 mentally handicapped adults with medication, many of whom cannot afford to pay for it on their own and will likely go on to hurt themselves or others before becoming a burden to the state’s already-crowded prison system.

Perhaps most absurd are the plans to sell another round of state buildings and then rent them back at a one-time saving of $300 million.

That’s right, we’re so broke as a state that we’re at that point in the game of Monopoly where you begin flipping over your property cards just to make it through the turn.

However, she does plan to finally eliminate the state’s controversial photo-radar program, even though it is expected to bring in $35 million next year, according to The Arizona Republic, and has proven effective in significantly reducing the number of fatalities from high-speed collisions, according to the Arizona Department of Transportation.

The governor’s budget proposal released earlier this month can only be described as madness in a martini glass, seeking not just to bleed Arizona dry, but also to saw at its bones.

A true cynic would suggest this decrease in quality of living could aid Arizonans in moving away from the now archaic Reagan conservativism that has dominated economic policy for the past thirty years in favor of more sustainable methods of revenue generation.

Perhaps we will never seek reform until we have truly hit rock bottom.

Even if this true, Brewer seems incapable of realizing the full implications of her budget plan, and the permanent damages it can and will impose upon Arizona.

This is not merely madness, nor the last in a series of wrongs committed against our state.

No, this is just the beginning.

Hal enjoys his doom and gloom served with a smiling pint of cynicism. Send him your thoughts at hscohen@asu.edu

Budget plan summary:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/01/16/201001...

Executive summary, “Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril”:
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=56044