Statement: Open And Contentious Debate Being Stifled By The Status Quo

STATEMENT
June 17, 2015

Open And Contentious Debate Being Stifled By the Status Quo
Budget The Culmination Of Months Of Back-Room Negotiations And Special Deals

The floor session addressing the state’s budget in the Rhode Island House of Representatives was short, pervasively unanimous, and light on opposition action. The momentum of the evening – the culmination of months of back-room negotiations and special deals – was so strong that Republicans did not even put forward a plan that their caucus had developed as an alternative for funding infrastructure without debt.

The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity has already released a statement on the budget, itself, and the details are largely unchanged. On the day after the vote, however, Rhode Islanders should find it shocking that insiders and special interests have our government so locked up that neither conservatives nor progressives can muster sustained political opposition to a budget that claims so much authority for the government and spends so much of the people’s money.

Providing an alternative to the status quo thinking about government is core to the Center’s mission. Now more than ever, the people of Rhode Island must work independently of their government to change minds, to change the debate, and to change the direction in which the Ocean State is headed.

Only a well-informed, passionate electorate can put Rhode Islanders back at the center of their state’s decision-making process and foster freedom and prosperity. If there is no open and contentious debate inside the State House, then it is only more critical for there to be open and contentious debate outside of it.

Media Contact:
Mike Stenhouse, CEO
401.429.6115 | info@rifreedom.org
About the Center
The nonpartisan RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is Rhode Island’s premiere free-enterprise think tank. The mission of the 501c3 nonprofit organization is to return government to the people by opposing special-interest politics and advancing proven free-market solutions that can transform lives by restoring economic competitiveness, increasing educational opportunities, and protecting individual freedoms.