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Letters – 6/30

various
July 01, 2011

PUD wrong on REC contract

Well it’s happened, large industrial power customers will start receiving power contracts.

At Monday’s PUD meeting Commissioners Brewer, Bernd and Walker voted to allow REC to receive unlimited power and use multiple meters for 20 years into the future. To their credit, Commissioners Allred and Flint voted against this power pigout. This opens the door for all large industrial customers in this rate class to receive the same. This irresponsible action will greatly effect power rates for residential and farm customers in the future.

Aside from the fact that Grant PUD is out of physical power from its project, they will now have to build expensive infrastructure to accommodate the increasing power demands as a result of this vote. The other rate classes will help pay for this increased cost. Much more market power will have to be purchased as a result. Multiple meters will have the effect of reducing the power bill for these industrial customers by placing them in a lower rate tier, further reducing revenue from the industrials.

All the discussion on industrial contracts has taken place out of the public eye. No news release, hearings or newspaper articles have alerted the public of this development, like it was passed in the middle of the night so nobody would notice. This is reprehensible and should be remembered at next year’s PUD election.

— Greg Hansen, past PUD Commissioner

Doc is against bailouts

As a member of Congress I have voted against each and every bailout, whether it was for Wall Street, automakers or banks and whether they were under President Obama or President Bush. President Obama and his administration promised that intervening at the taxpayer expense would keep our economy from the brink. Unfortunately, today we still have 9.1 percent unemployment, crushing debt, massive deficits and Washington families are struggling.

The American people were aware of the bailouts here in the United States, however with the financial unrest abroad, it is becoming more evident that our government can use taxpayer dollars to rescue foreign governments. In 2009 the International Monetary Fund received $108 billion in supplemental funding from U.S. taxpayer dollars and these funds are available to the IMF to bail out foreign countries.

I take issue with this use of taxpayer funds because our government’s spending spree cannot continue, especially when it is money we don’t have. The American taxpayers simply should not, and cannot afford to bail out other countries.

Bailing out Greece, when we just recently learned from the Congressional Budget Office that our nations debt will overtake our entire economy in the next 10 years, is unthinkable and irresponsible. I think it is the American people who deserve a bailout—a bailout from costly regulations, a bailout from high taxes and a bailout from $4 gallon gasoline—not another taxpayer bailout for Greece.

When the United States entered into a recession, European governments didn’t come to our aid with billion dollar bailouts and offers of support. When the Washington state budget deficit hit $2 billion, the IMF did not bail us out. I don’t believe that sending billions to prop up failing European social welfare programs is the best use of your tax dollars, especially when we face significant challenges, including record deficits and new double-digit unemployment, here at home.

I do not believe that families in Yakima, Chelan, Ephrata or Goldendale should pay to bail out Greece from decades of overspending. And, I’m co-sponsoring and supporting a bill to protect American taxpayers from bailouts of European nations — a bill that rescinds the ability of the $108 billion in taxpayer dollars from being used to bail out foreign countries and direct the unused funds to pay down our own $14 trillion deficit.

I join many other fiscally conservative members of Congress in this legislation because we recognize that we need to get our own fiscal house in order and end a culture of too big to fail and taxpayer-funded bailouts.

— Congressman Doc Hastings