Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

We all want the same thing: protection from catastrophic illness and the security of affordable health coverage in the future. To their credit, Americans have read the bills working their way through Congress and are objecting to the health care rationing and control over their health care quality and decisions.

This is an open letter to Sen. Pamela Gorman. You seem to have forgotten for whom you work. Please let me remind you, you work for the people of Arizona. I am a citizen of Arizona and a resident of the district you represent in the Arizona Senate. Therefore, as a voter from your district, you work for me.

When Congress returns in September it will resume work on health insurance reform. This is an issue that is intensely personal and affects us all - even those with whom we may disagree.

Imagine you just lost your job. For too many these days, this is not an imaginary scenario. You're sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad, thinking about evaluating your savings, keeping up with the rent, canceling the cable television, gathering the grocery coupons out of the mail that you used to throw away. Suddenly, from the next room, you hear your daughter sneeze. That's when you remember - losing your job means your family will lose health insurance, too.

Nowhere in the debate regarding health care has anyone asked if the government is able and qualified to run such a system. Before we ask the government to manage universal health care, let's check them out. How successful has the federal government been in managing agencies, programs and businesses?

I'm unemployed, but I don't want to see the Legislature get rid of the state equalization property tax, even though it would lower my home's property taxes. Why? Because the state needs the money more than I do to offset a $3 billion deficit and keep government services running at least at a base level.

Arizona's plan to widen the congested streets of U.S. 60 - our own Grand Avenue - became the 6,000th highway project in the nation this week to be funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or federal stimulus. This project puts nearly $45 million to work in Maricopa County, bringing desperately needed jobs to our state. But Sen. Jon Kyl said he doesn't approve of this economic boost to Arizona.

Thank you again for being the best source of news in Arizona. There has been scant mention of the three measures that will be on the 2010 ballot on or in any other venue. The Arizona Capitol Times is the best place to find out what is happening at the Legislature.

This tagline - Politics. Simplified. - sums up our new and improved Web site perfectly. If you want to know what's happening in Arizona politics, you go to the leader in Capitol news: the Arizona Capitol Times. And now, we've taken that mission a step farther by recreating our Web site. The inside track to Arizona politics is available 24/7 at www.azcapitoltimes.com.

The federal government's "Cash for Clunkers" program ran out of money in a matter of days. The program, which pays people to trade in perfectly serviceable automobiles so the government can turn the cars into scrap, was not expected to reach the costs that it did.