Your article highlighting the cuts proposed by Gov. Larry Hogan in his first budget ("Hogan plan would cut budgets for years to come," Jan. 26) shows a rather meager attempt to "Change Maryland" for the better — a campaign promise he continued to trumpet throughout his inaugural address.
Though Mr. Hogan has the dubious distinction of following a rather irresponsible O'Malley/Brown administration whose idea of cuts and savings were targeting the rich and hard working upper class while increasing the size of government through added tax increases to support socialized welfare programs, he cannot slash his way to growth by targeting the very individuals who were hired to help him obtain such progress — state workers.
To begin a policy of fiscal responsibility by eliminating a long-awaited 2 percent pay increase recently received by state employees is like hiring your tax accountant with a bounced check. It's insane, idiotic and makes no sense, especially when you have yet to target questionable social programs and Democratic pet-projects, as well as the welfare programs that are inundated with those who'd rather live off the hand outs of others rather than find a respectable paying job.
Instead, the governor targets the thousands of hard-working mothers and fathers looking to maintain a healthy way of life for their families, many of whom have forgone the private practice in order to give back through their own form of public service.
Governor Hogan needs to really research the man he quoted in his inaugural speech on Wednesday, President Ronald Reagan, who understood that you grow the size of the economic pie by helping the unproductive become productive through tough love, not by targeting the honest taxpayers who are earning their piece of the pie the old-fashioned way, through hard-work. Reagan realized that the weakness of our economy came from policies concentrated on rationing scarcity rather than creating plenty, so that instead of pitting different classes of citizens against one another to fight for their share of an ever-shrinking pie, you help Americans produce a bigger pie so that everyone would have a bigger slice.
Hassan Giordano, Baltimore