Kotek’s $600M homeless bailout (while police, elections, hospitals get ignored)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek is planning to spend an extra $600 million blowout bailout package on the homeless in the next 8 weeks. Part of the package, paid by booming tax revenue,  is to help build houses and to pay for people’s rent.

We documented on how Oregon spent an extra $1.3 billion on such programs (mostly from new taxes) in the past five years and homelessness went up 22% (while the national rate only went up .3%)

There are more urgent needs for financial help in Oregon than to build homes/pay rent to subsidize homeless from other states who come here for our nationally recognized free handouts.

Here are a few places that could use emergency aid:

#1. Law enforcement. The prosecutor and public defender shortage crisis is causing scores of criminal suspects to be released without a trial. The Legislature allocated funds, but it is not enough. Lawmakers need to keep adding $25,000 hiring bonuses (on top of existing bonuses) until we get ahead of the problem.

#2. Hospitals. It was reported that hospitals are canceling surgeries for lack of nurses. People are at risk of dying. Oregon’s vaccine mandate (among 6 states with the strictest/most inflexible mandate) chased out nearly a thousand nurses during the pandemic.  Those nurses fled to other states that offered massive hiring bonuses.  Also, Oregon’s high hospital taxes and red tape rules have put Oregon hospitals in nearly a half-billion in loses. Medical centers are closing across the state. Lawmakers should undo the extreme damage they did to hospitals and save lives by extending emergency aid to hospitals to get their surgeries back up and running.

#3. Elections. Right now election offices are being hit with both death threats and cyber attacks. They also say that they are short staffed and can’t perform their basic duties properly. The election season ramps up in nearly 100 days. These offices need to be fully funded and fully protected from hacking and other security threats.

Post-script notes: To her credit, Governor Kotek tried to pass a bill this year relaxing Oregon’s over-burdensome regulations on building a house to desperately increase supply but the uncompromising and unforgiving environmentalists lobbied against it.  Now we have a scenario where our high taxes/regulations have created a housing crisis and the only solution offered by our liberal leaders in power is to use taxpayer funds by the near-billions to force homes to be built on time and affordably.   This is what we call a dumb-dumb loop.  We see it in Portland, where Portland raises taxes causing businesses to flee, and then they use tax money to offer free tax credits against their newly passed high taxes to entice businesses from leaving. Portland defunds police by 100 positions and then asks the Governor to direct 100 State Troopers to help Portland.   Liberals can’t admit failure even when it is standing in front of their face.  They just double down on failure by dumping more tax money to artificially create the result they are looking for to remedy the problem they created.

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