It's time to clean the Statehouse

Iowa Republicans can’t be trusted to manage your money anymore.

Their reckless revenue and spending decisions have made a shambles of the state finances. They have created a huge $1.2 billion deficit that will soon blow a massive hole in the state budget and undermine essential services we depend on.

Since they took over state government in 2017, they have hoarded the tax payments of blue- collar wage-earning families to create a massive slush fund to shower unsustainable income tax cuts on their wealthy friends and free tuition for their kids to attend private schools.

Over nearly a decade as they stockpiled our tax money, they starved our local public schools, universities, mental health and rural health providers; increased our doctor and nurse shortages; and made our drinking water less safe.

The math is simple. Republican politicians in Des Moines are now spending roughly $1.2 billion more each year than the revenue coming into the state coffers. And to make matters worse, the same politicians are using more than $3.5 billion in one-time funds to balance the state budget.

That means in about three short years, without spending a dollar more on anything, which is impossible, the one-time reserve funds will be exhausted. What will follow are more drastic budget cuts to local schools, health care and public safety. Republicans now honestly say this was always their plan!

Well, no business can survive long by spending more than it earns. And using a one-time pot of money to pay for ongoing expenses is a recipe for bankruptcy.

Every Iowa family understands this reality. Paying your mortgage, rent, and grocery bills out of a limited savings account leads straight to homelessness and hunger.

Now, the same Republicans in Des Moines who can’t balance a checkbook want to dictate how local elected officials raise and spend property taxes. These are the last people who should be making those decisions. Their incompetence with public funds is well-documented, which made it laughable to hear Gov. Kim Reynolds recently lecture local elected officials on managing their city and county budgets.

Republicans’ long-held disdain for the essential role of government; their lack of respect for the everyday Iowans who provide such important services as public education, public safety, public works, and public health — and their fantasy of eliminating the state income tax entirely — are at the heart of their fiscal malpractice.

Ten years of one-party Republican control of state government has hurt people and damaged our state. Red Iowa has morphed into the Mississippi of the Midwest. Our young people are fleeing, and newcomers are thinking twice about moving to Iowa to live, work and raise a family.

It’s time to send in the cleanup crew! This November, let’s clean house and end irresponsible Republican fiscal mismanagement. It’s time for state policymakers to put the hopes and needs of hardworking Iowans ahead of the fat cats and greedy corporate interests.

Joe Bolkcom is a former state senator representing Iowa City. He served on the Senate Ways and Means and Appropriations committees for 24 years. He lives in Des Moines.