Use rainy day fund to keep state growing

Remember Chicken Little? The state has a big rainy day fund, and many people with jobs. Yet, we are told many people should lose their jobs because we spend too much on safety, education, health care and social good. Why should our proud state go backward out of a ridiculous fear?

Federal stimulus money helped; now use the state rainy day fund to keep the economy growing to provide a bigger tax base.

Cutting taxes for the richest does not help all people in the long run. Why cut programs that work to give our money to special interests and the wealthy?

Why support repealing the federal Affordable Care Act? In Iowa, 8,330 young Iowans will lose insurance coverage through their parents' health plans and 29,897 Iowans on Medicare will have to pay significantly more to get necessary prescription drugs (see www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/repeal costs/ia.html). Insurance companies again will deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, drop coverage when a patient gets sick, or impose arbitrary lifetime caps on coverage. Small businesses will again have to pay higher insurance rates than large corporations.

Johnson County has been welcoming to innovation and all people, so others want to punish us by stopping Amtrak and micromanaging The University of Iowa.

If the legislative change in November was supposed to increase jobs, it is doing the opposite. Jobs now are better than the wish for imaginary jobs.

Judy Pfohl

Iowa City