An issue of humanity...

Yes, it’s an issue of humanity.

The budget issue is an issue of humanity. You may wonder why I say that. Over the weekend, I attended the Michigan Policy Summit, which was put on by the Michigan Prospect. We talked a little bit about health care, education, and clean energy – how these things all have implications of humanity behind them. I think everything the government does should be backed by humanity.

Tuesday, I sat through a presentation about cutting the budget. It totaled $1 billion in cuts. It made me physically sick, to say the least. The programs proposed to be cut were clearly the ones that many of our citizens use. I know that we get a lot of people who don’t want their taxes raised, and I can respect that. But what they don’t realize is that if funding is cut for things like the Department of Community Health, Department of Human Services, and the School Aid Fund, to name a few, the people of Michigan will not have much to offer. These cuts would be across the board and cut everything from libraries to child protective services to Medicaid services to home caretaker relatives. I understand that not everyone uses these programs. Seriously, I get that. However, we all benefit from these things. They make our society better – by providing quality education to all kids, our workforce is stronger. By providing health care to all, our kids have a better shot of learning in school and our workforce is able to go to work and is more reliable. Our libraries offer books, programs, videos, CDs, and other various things for the whole community to use.

Our society shouldn’t be about how to make the next dollar. It should be about providing our citizens with the tools they need in order to thrive in our state, not just merely survive. Sure, profits are a good thing – they drive business. But, if our people aren’t taken care of, those profit goals are harder to attain. We need to start investing in our people – ALL of our people. It’s the right thing to do.