As a state legislator, I will be voting soon on the $83 million bond proposal. In hopes of casting a vote based on facts rather than emotion, I’ve been studying the issue closely. In that regard, I read a Sun Journal Op-Ed July 17 by the president of the Maine Senate, Beth Edmonds, titled “Bond package keeps Maine in business.”

Let me respond to some of the points made in that column.

The first question that comes to mind is this: How can borrowing $83 million be good for the people of Maine? Our existing debt tops $5 billion. In addition, the state currently owes some $300 million to Maine hospitals. Gov. Baldacci dramatically expanded the Medicaid rolls and then declined to pay the hospitals for treating all those thousands of new people. More bonded indebtedness must be repaid with taxes, and we already have one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.

Last year, Republicans said no to a bond package. Before a bond proposal can be sent to the electorate, it needs to pass the House and Senate by a two-thirds vote. Given the Democrats’ narrow majority in the House, GOP votes are needed to hit that mark. Considering last year’s rancorous, uncivil atmosphere in the Legislature, Republicans refused to increase our debt. I had not yet been elected to the House, but I agreed with that decision.

Predictably, the majority party and the press went to work. Members of the public were told that Republicans were irresponsible. It was said that the people of Maine would have no medicine, that the roads would crumble to dust, that joblessness would run rampant. From the media hysteria, it sounded like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be galloping through our city streets.

Naturally, these worn-out scare tactics backfired. Maine is still here, and none of the predicted horrors have materialized. We should remember that these attacks came from the same crowd that thought borrowing $450 million to “keep the lights on” was the “responsible” thing to do. Only after 57,000 Mainers signed the people’s veto to repeal that foolish part of the budget did the majority party hustle around to scuttle their own fiscal Frankenstein. They knew the voters hated it.

This time around, we are hearing from Democrats that the $83 million bond package is “too small.” Of course, their leadership agreed to that amount. But now the various special interests have had a chance to see what’s in the package. And some of them, to their dismay, have discovered that their pet projects have gotten the ax. With those projects left off the list, we’re being told again, all manner of pestilence and privation will befall Maine.

These complaints give rise to another question. If the majority party thought those bond-driven programs were so critical, then why not make them a priority and fund them through the budget? The reason is that in a Democrat-controlled Legislature, everything is a priority, especially our gigantic welfare and socialized medicine systems.

So rather than set genuine priorities, which takes political courage, they take the easy road and increase debt. They issue bonds and pass the costs down to our children. When Republicans balk at excessive debt, we get the squealing from the pigs being dragged away from the public trough.

If Republicans had been allowed to enact our pro-growth, pro-business agenda in the legislative session just concluded, we would be on our way to creating jobs. Those jobs would have paid benefits (to reduce the Medicaid rolls) and taxes (to bolster state revenues). We could have generated more than enough new money to pay for the bond projects without increasing our debt. We could have passed real spending reform, fixed workers’ comp and relaxed some regulations that strangle business.

Instead, the majority party, largely along party lines, decreased reimbursement of taxes on business equipment, increased corporate tax rates, did nothing to reform workers’ comp, added more people to Medicaid, continued funding the black hole of Dirigo and increased “sin” taxes on cigarettes, which will strike brutally at the poor and elderly.

Why would any business executive or entrepreneur take a chance and invest their money in a place that regards them as a bottomless pool to pay for Democrats’ social engineering? Our business “friendliness” climate is ranked around 48th worse in the nation. If we want decent jobs and prosperity, rather than watch as companies depart, we need a vision for the state and strong leadership to carry it out. Sadly, we have neither today.

Do I think there should be any bonds? Yes, for transportation. But only if the governor can leave it alone and use it to fix roads, bridges, ferry terminals and other key infrastructure elements. The dirty little secret is that he “sweeps” the transportation accounts and uses the cash for more social spending. If he would stop sweeping away all that money, we wouldn’t need another bond this year.

And if we could find the $150 million of federal funding that the Department of Health and Human Services “lost” last year, we could even repeal some of those business-killing taxes that the majority party recently enacted, in their obliviousness to economic reality.

Rep. Scott Lansley, a first-term Republican legislator, represents District 75 in Sabattus and Greene.

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