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Steven
Cunningham
State Representative
Sullivan District 2
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February
13, 2010
Representative
Steven Cunningham represents Sullivan District 2 in the NH House of Representatives.
Representative
Cunningham is a member of the House Committee on Municipal and
County Government.
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As a new NH state representative, I attended my first
State of the State address by the governor. I was surprised to hear that
we had a balanced budget. Now the governor finally seems to be ready to
admit that the State of New Hampshire can no longer continue with a tax
and spend mentality. On Thursday he finally realized what the State House
Republicans have been trying to tell him all along—we don’t have a
revenue problem, we have a spending problem. The governor called his
department heads together and asked them to make across-the-board cuts
totaling $140 million through the next fiscal year—a 2% cut through the
rest of this fiscal year and 8% in cuts through 2011. Just a short time
ago his party lambasted Republicans when we recommended 10% in budget
cuts! The irony is that these cuts wouldn’t have been necessary had he
been able to rein-in his legislature while they were busy increasing the
General Fund spending by 25% over the past three years.
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But, even in the face
of a huge deficit and the edict from the corner office to make cuts,
Republicans have been defeated in our attempts at returning $25 million in
revenue sharing to the cities and towns in HB 1274; but we were
successful, with the assistance of 25 Democrats, to pass HB 1128 that
would send $5 million in meals and rooms revenue back to our
municipalities. Unfortunately the legislation must still survive the
Senate. The legislation sponsored by the House Republican leadership
(HB1664/HB 1672), offers very specific cuts with an impact on the
appropriations resulting in a net gain of nearly $28 million. We have been
talking about cutting spending for nearly four years and now that we are
facing a $250 million deficit, the governor decides it’s time to take
action. The problem facing Governor Lynch now, of course, is the fact that
we are already nearly a third of the way into the biennium. Had
these cuts been enacted seven months ago, it would
have resulted in $200 million in savings. That’s $60 million more than
the governor is asking for in cuts from his department heads today. As a
result, we could have easily avoided the LLC income tax ($30M).
Steven Cunningham, Representative
Sullivan County District 2
Telephone: 603-271-3317
Email:
drstevec@live.com
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