“What he can do is line item veto. I’d be looking real hard if I was him on the money inside those districts who voted no,” Mat-Su Sen. Mike Shower wrote on Facebook about how Gov. Mike Dunleavy should deal with the rejection of the Senate budget by the House Saturday.

So Shower is telling Dunleavy to have at it in District 10 in Mat-Su, home of Rep. David Eastman, and House District 7 in Wasilla, home to Rep. Christopher Kurka. Punish Alaskans with the veto if they live in the wrong districts.

Eastman and Kurka voted against the Senate budget and the $3.6 billion payout to Alaskans, along with 20 other members of the House.

Half of Shower’s Senate district is Eastman’s House district, so Shower will probably ask Dunleavy to find things to veto in other offending districts.

The Republicans are furious at Eastman, a radical who has always been an obstructionist, and mad at Kurka, a fellow right-wing extremist who is running for governor. The two gave long-winded explanations for their opposition related to the size of the budget, abortion and other issues.

“They voted with the pro abortion Democrats. I am speechless,” wrote Rep. Kevin McCabe, who wasn’t.

His wife, Linn McCabe, exemplified the over-the-top blabber from the Republicans with a Facebook dirge for the dividend.

“A collective groan spread across Alaska as the people once again felt the full force of the boot on their necks exerted by the ruling class,” wrote McCabe.

One of Shower’s Facebook friends complained that opponents of the $3.6 billion in cash payouts “mock God by their actions.”

According to Shower, the McCabes and the other complainants, legislators who did not vote for the $3.6 billion payout are against Alaskans and are controlled by the evil special interests. Those who voted for the $3.6 billion payout are real Alaskans, with the interests of the people uppermost in their minds.

Nonsense. The Senate budget was founded on the prayer that the war in Ukraine will continue and oil will be priced at more than $100 a barrel every day of the fiscal year that begins July 1. The Senate budget would spend all of that and much more. No competent legislator would vote for a plan like that.

About the delays in voting on the budget, Linn McCabe wrote, “For the next 3 days, the Speaker wielded her scepter and ruled repeatedly (without the required 21 votes) to postpone the floor session. During this time, powerful senators and representatives from on high descended into the lowly encampment of the plebes with whom they rarely interact, and attempted to leverage their votes, through whatever tactics at their disposal. The unions and other special interests joined in the fray, showing up in person, emailing, and calling, as they worked to protect their brotherhood of government funding recipients from the Voice of the People. “

Rep. Mike Cronk complained that he is “tired of this state being run by special interests and unions.” He said the unions “lied” about the Senate budget.

“The dishonesty today was off the charts,” Cronk wrote, apparently referring to other legislators.

He wrote on Facebook that Eastman “doesn’t give a rat’s arse about his constituents” and that Eastman and Kurka did nothing to help their constituents.

“Eastman and Kurka screwed every Alaskan! Those are facts,” said Cronk. “Fact is, they are the sole reason we ended up in this situation.”

Had Eastman and Kurka supported the Senate budget, the vote would have been tied 20-20 and failed. But perhaps some other legislators would have switched as well.

When a Facebook commenter said that “a bunch” of legislators who voted against the Senate budget had said they would support it, Shower said they were either lying or pressured to switch,

“They either lied or were flipped by threats of promises from the very people who actually run this state who showed their power this week by influencing some of those legislators to flip from a yes vote to a no vote. Big unions, big business, municipalities, chambers of commerce, the wealthy and elites, the press, etc., etc. They flooded this place last week to kill the concurrence vote—it wasn’t about the budget they could case less—it was about killing the PFD.”

In fact, it was about the budget. It was not about killing the PFD.

The two Fairbanks Republican legislators who have the best grasp of state finances in the House—Reps. Steve Thompson and Bart LeBon—voted against the Senate plan because the numbers didn’t add up.

What Shower and others refuse to even think about is that the Alaskans who spoke out against the Senate budget represent a wide variety of Alaskans with different opinions and competing priorities, not a cabal of overlords oppressing the residents of the state.

The state is going to end up making cash payments to Alaskans that will probably exceed $1 billion or $1.5 billion. The Republicans, all with their eyes on the election, are trying to whip up hysteria that anything less than $3.6 billion in cash payments is an insult.

They don’t understand the word “billion” or the need to plan for the next moment when oil drops to $50. Many of those who want giant dividends refuse to raise oil taxes or support any new taxes to pay for giant dividends.

They refuse to say what services they would cut or what happens in two or three years. They are happy to enter the next fiscal year dreaming that oil will remain sky high. That is not conservative. It is irresponsible.

The legislators who are really looking out for the people of Alaska are those who are trying to make an intelligent assessment of state services, taxes, and resource wealth to see what combination of policies best meets the needs of the state now.

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