WASHINGTON — Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, who arrived in Washington on Friday for the National Governors Association’s annual winter meeting, contrasted his situation with that of many of his fellow state executives, who he said are “pulling their hair out,” as they try to grapple with large budget shortfalls and vexing policy disputes.
As they meet in Washington, “there is a lot of unrest back in the state capitols,” said Beebe, a Democrat.
“They’re worried about coming out of this recession. They’re worried about a federal government shutdown,” he said. “They’re worried about how long it’s going to take to restore all those job losses that most of those states incurred over the course of the last 2 1/2 or three years.”
Spending cuts in education and public infrastructure threaten states in the long-term, wrote Michael Greenstone and Bruce Katz in a preview of the governors’ meeting for the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center Washington research and advocacy group.
“The crisis in state budgets and the requirement that they balance budgets each year threatens to compound this - forcing cuts in critical public investment projects that determine our future prosperity, and that of our children.”
Still, cuts are necessary, they wrote, even if they are made to public employees’ compensation.
“Policymakers cannot continue to promise retirement packages, for example,that will consume budgets at the expense of other critical investments.”
In Indiana and Wisconsin, the budget showdowns and fights over the public employees’ collective-bargaining rights have ground the legislative process to a halt, amid spirited demonstrations in those states’ capitols.
Beebe, on the other hand, sent a budget to the General Assembly that called for funding increases in higher education, public schools and the state prison system.
In an interview at the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel where the meeting is being held, Beebe said “we walk down the hallways here, not smug, because we don’t enjoy anybody else’s pain and we wish the best for all our sister states, but it creates a lot of pride and some degree of satisfaction we’re not in that same ship.”
On Friday, Beebe missed a meeting with Democratic governors and President Barack Obama because his flight was delayed. He did attend a discussion with several business leaders, including chief executives from Northrop Grumman and Discovery.
Beebe will chair a meeting of the governor’s natural-resources committee this weekend.
On Sunday, he plans to attend dinner at the White House with the other governors.
On Monday, Beebe and Arkansas state health officials plan to meet with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to discuss Beebe’s plan to move from a fee-for-service payment system for Medicaid.
He said Sebelius sounded “enthusiastic” about the possibility of trying to “utilize Arkansas as an example of how we can contain healthcare costs and still address quality by new models of payment.”
Beebe said that he was confident that Congress would agree to a budget plan for the remainder of the current fiscal year and avoid a federal government shutdown.
Last week, the House passed a spending plan that the Senate will consider when it returns to business Monday.
The House legislation contains $62 billion in spending cuts that have been slammed by Democratic Senate leaders and resulted in a veto threat by Obama.
“Shutting down the government is a pretty drastic remedy,” Beebe said. “It hurts people. Hopefully these folks have enough understanding about the importance of working together that they’ll put that first rather than whatever their political differences are.”
Front Section, Pages 3 on 02/26/2011