The budget fight this year is not the same as it has been in the past. In the recent election, Hawai’i’s voters chose a different path than they had in the previous two elections. This budget is the first major test for the new vision for how the state will be. Faith Action for Community Equity FACE sides with the optimistic view that with shared financial sacrifice, we can get through the tough times without sacrificing our shared values. This will cost all of us in taxes and time, but it is worth what we will pay.

Our state legislative leaders need to re-examine long held assumptions regarding the current budget debate. All revenue enhancing measures need to be on the table. During the Lingle years, the legislature became used to cutting the budget in order to make our state work. And there may have been a time for that — a time when the need to boost efficiency and the desire to trim excess spending was appropriate — but that time is now long past. Hawaii’s state government has been starved to the point where somehow we were willing to accept furloughs for school children. We actually decided to give our kids a worse education in order to save a few bucks. We made penny pinching more important that second grade, than libraries, than community centers, than Medicaid.

There is a tough truth that the legislature needs to face up to right now – and that is we need to raise revenues and spend more. Hawai’i’s human and physical capital desperately needs investment and support. We have deferred maintenance on the soul of our islands and it is time for us to sacrifice for our own common good as well as for our future. That means increasing the GET, it means closing certain exemptions to GET, but it also means looking at taxing things like soda and beer. I would not buy one less drink based on an additional tax, and I don’t think anyone else would either. Within our state we may not be able to stop the Tea Party activists in the Congress from trying to cut our Pacific Tsunami Warning System – but we can reject the logic behind that kind of conclusion here in the islands.

We all know that we cannot do more with less, we will only do less and be less. If we want the future to be better than the past, we need to start paying for it now. Hawaii is not a state with harsh tax burdens – we can and should pay more for the things that matter most. That means supporting families, educating our children well, building a place to shelter and heal the homeless and broken, and making sure our healthcare system covers everyone in our state, but it also means building a rail system and addressing our deteriorating infrastructure. We need to make the investments that grow economies. We are all in this together – we all have a stake in our state – we are stockholders in our own future, and we need to invest in our shared future if we are going to grow.

About the author: Drew Astolfi is the state director of Faith Action for Community Equity of Hawaii.