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September 09, 2009 06:35 PM UTC

Penry Budget Hypocrisy Doesn't Fly Under Scrutiny

  • 15 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

We warned gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry that making a stink about certain recently-ordered budget cuts that affect his district, while making fiscally absurd statements like “I would have rejected stimulus funds as Governor,” was easily paintable as the cheapest kind of hypocritical pandering. Examples of stimulus funding gratefully accepted by local governments in Penry’s district in the news, along with stories from across the state of stimulus funds going to work on much-needed projects, make the questions about Penry’s stand, if you will, stand out.

The self-evident hazards of Penry’s approach may have come to a head in today’s Denver Post:

State Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry and other Republicans have repeatedly said that Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter isn’t making the “tough choices” to cut spending in order to balance the budget.

But when Ritter last month announced one particular cut, the closure of a 32-bed nursing unit for developmentally disabled patients in Penry’s hometown of Grand Junction, Penry and other Western Slope Republicans pounced…

“Many, if not most, of the people in that wing need a high level of care,” said Penry, who was quoted as calling the decision to close the unit “classic back-of-the-napkin budgeting from this governor” in an Aug. 22 story in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

Evan Dreyer, a spokesman for Ritter, said there is a plan to place the patients in community care, adding that Penry’s criticism of the closure of the unit in his own district smacks of hypocrisy.

“Closing a $1.8 billion budget shortfall because of the recession required difficult choices and painful decisions,” Dreyer said. “This is one of them.”

…Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, a member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said Penry was trying to have it both ways, appearing sympathetic to local advocates who oppose the closure while looking tough to fiscal conservatives by not technically opposing the closure. [Pols emphasis]

“I’m really glad Sen. Penry realizes the importance of services,” Ferrandino said. “It’s just striking that he only realizes that when it happens in his own neighborhood.”

[…]

“It’s not that I don’t want to make an effort in shrinking government,” [Rep. Steve] King said. [Pols emphasis] “I just think this is the wrong hard decision.”

Our view: there’s no way out of this that doesn’t make Penry and crew look like simpering irresponsible hypocrites. The Grand Junction Sentinel was nice enough to report Penry’s complaints with insufficient context (though they wrote a great editorial blasting “armchair lawmakers” that somehow avoided mentioning him)–with the full story told by the Post’s Tim Hoover, Penry’s case falls apart faster than you can say “Reagan tripled the national debt.”

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15 thoughts on “Penry Budget Hypocrisy Doesn’t Fly Under Scrutiny”

      1. Why doesn’t he produce one of those R budget proposals with no numbers like the House did last  Spring?

        I realize even nineteen pages of “blueprint” might be too much detail and too hard. But that was for the federal budget.  Penry should be able to cover Colorado in less than 1/2 or 1/4.

      1. Governor “Ratched” Ritter’s budget priorities are indicative of his values. On one hand Ritter uses public monies through his energy office to subsidize solar panels on the homes of, well, the “largely underserved” populations in the communities like Aspen and Carbondale. On the other hand, Ritter cuts services from societies’ most vulnerable populations. Governor Ritter should divert his NEED grant program dollars to serving the disabled. How about donating Tom Plants’ six figure salary to shoaring up the regional center to maintain beds for Colorado’s marginalized clients?

        If having wealthy people receive subsidies to for solar panels on their homes is more important than serving someone with Cerebral Palsy at the Grand Junction Regional Center then Governor Ratched, I mean ehh, Ritter, needs to be replaced indeed!  

        This is just like the Mayor of Denver threatening 100 police jobs, while spending millions on drunken art projects, elitist tax benefits for the wealthy’s entertainment, etc…

        1. it’s that don’t tax but keep on spending in my back yard,  is the road to nowhere.  And here we are, with the GOP who steered us here still insisting they’re the ones with the only accurate map. The sheer scope of the nerve this takes is stunning.  

          1. If you believe in fiscal conservatism, the last place on earth you should look for salvation is the GOP. They have single-handedly destroyed America’s finances since the 1980s, with the sole exception of George H W Bush, who was rejected by his own party precisely because of his fiscal sobriety. The current debt is overwhelmingly inherited by Obama, and it would have been nuts to enter office in the downdraft of the sharp recession and set about cutting spending. Bush had eight years to restrain it and he didn’t. He let it rip. Think of the GOP’s phony concerns about the cost of the current healthcare bill and compare it with the GOP’s prescription drug entitlement that Rove rammed through the Congress when the GOP held total power. The costs then were about eight times as great as the proposed costs now. But that was a Republican measure and so it doesn’t somehow count as evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. But Nancy Pelosi only has to raise an eye-brow and the alarms go off.

            http://andrewsullivan.theatlan…

  4. to see Penry squealing when confronted with “reality” of his own rhetoric. You know Grover Norquist would be celebrating this closure–but then what has Grover Norquist ever run for?

    If Josh is serious about protecting vulnerable constituents–and if he wants to be governor that means not just Grand Junction but the entire state–then he should present both (a) a budget cut package of his and, and (b) a TABOR reform plan. If he agrees that TABOR is harming the state, then what is his plan to reform Colorado’s revenue collection system?  

    1. saying that only government run heath care can serve these patients?  No other facility can provide that care?  If Penry was not a lying flimflam man and consistent in logic, he’d be championing President Obama’s heath care plan, because obviously, Penry loves him some government supported heath care.  Right?  The sad part is, it is not the patients Penry if concerned about.  He is more interested in juvenile cheap political shots in support of his own ego driven political future.

  5. Now, Pols…you guys tried to jump all over Penry’s case when he was doing his due diligence on the mercury storage issue instead of conducting the “ready, fire, aim!” routine like Ritter.  I suspect you’ll find that Penry is right in the middle of working out the details on this issue as well.  

    For a clue on some of the things Penry would do to cut spending, go back to the legislative session and dig up some of the amendments he and his colleagues offered up just to be killed by ruling Democrats.  

    1. The guy is running for Governor.  He should publish his budget priorities.

      To look at what died in even the most recent session is almost useless for several reasons.

      1) I think we can all agree that legislators sometimes propose things they know will not pass for reasons other than hoping they will pass. And I think we can agree that it’s hard to tell in retrospect which is which so we can’t tell what his real budget priorities are.

      2) The Colorado budget crafted Jan- Apr was based on revenue projections that we now know were  too high.  Would Penry’s priorities adjust accordingly? How?

      I could go on, but the point is simple: Penry launched his candidacy claiming in general he would be a better governor than Ritter or anyone else.  He said specifically that Ritter has been unable or unwilling to make the hard choices that the governor sometimes has to make.

      Hooey- unless and until Penry publishes his own recommendation for a budget and shows us how he would make the hard choices.  I’m expecting he’ll attempt to do so within weeks of election day, or only after the JBC puts a budget together for him.

      Until then he’ll just keep complaining that he doesn’t like the way things are but without proposing specific changes he would make.

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