By ANDREA LANNOM
The Register-Herald
Meeting with several media outlets Wednesday to talk about the budget. Justice said he hoped lawmakers would go back to his plan and that they would not pass harmful cuts.
To make his point, he used an analogy of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”.
“In that situation, what happened is I was the old man and I worked really hard — really, really hard,” Justice said. “I sweated and cried and have had blood spilled and fought the fish night and day. And finally — if the fish were the Republicans — and finally, I got the fish to the boat and the fish didn’t necessarily like to be at the boat but I had the great fish at the boat.”
Continuing his analogy, Justice said he had the Democrats on the boat with him but then, he said he felt like they left him.
“They cut the line and pushed the fish back out to sea,” he said.
Justice explained his most recent plan in a press conference earlier this week. This plan would have included the personal income tax reduction but Justice said people making more than $300,000 a year would not receive a tax cut. The rate of reduction would have been 7 percent the first and second year and 6 percent the third year.
His plan also would have increased the sales tax to 6.35 percent, included $25 million for the Save Our State Fund, teacher pay raises, and severance tax tiering.
He mentioned concerns with the proposed cuts to higher education and Medicare.
“I’ve told them and told them and told them and told them,” he said. “We can’t let this happen. We can’t let the weak and the poor and the old get hurt but that’s what’s happening now right in front of us.
“The schools, our kids, we’re maybe at the point in time here where we are losing everything that we as Democrats stood for. Everything,” Justice said.
“And why did it happen?” Justice said. “It happened because they (the Democrats) left me. I fought this battle in every way. We had it done and then they left. Why? Why?”
Justice said he didn’t feel like Senate Republicans wanted the cuts proposed in the budget. He criticized Democrat lawmakers, especially those in the House, saying he felt they had the ability to “not let the fish go.”
Justice said if the bill came to him today with the porposed cuts, he would veto it. However, if the bill came to him days before a possible government shut down, he said he doesn’t know what he would do.
“To shut the government down would be catastrophic beyond belief,” he said.
“We didn’t have to cut like we’re talking about in any way,” Justice later said. “We could have helped our teachers and miners and universities. We had the thing done. That’s where we should go back to. We ought to run back to that and get things done.”
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