Oh come on, “Education” and police services aren’t the place to start. Get rid of the programs that aren’t part and parcel of a state’s constitutional obligations.
And besides, why talk about “programs” first? Start with employment, benefits, raises, pensions. Cut marginal performers and under performers first. Who would miss them. Cut or freeze benefits and compensation, especially pensions. Tough toenails if it “hurts” some government employees. They’ve enjoyed way too much compensation/benefits vis a vis their private counterparts, and way too much job security as well. Time to shake the trees.
Congratulations for being the first to point out that idiotic Hobson's Choice.
These are the natural places to start to pressure the sheeple to elect politicians to raise taxes.
Not only are the goody-goody union contracts left untouched, but so are lots of other schemes to buy influence such as "investing" in new downtown buildings for fascist style alliances with those well-placed in the business community, building expensive new sports palaces for owners who could easily afford to do their own and the general WAM (walking around money) mentality which put Pennsylvania so deep in the red after eight years of misrule by Rendell's regime.
Here in our county, we have two contrasts in reaction to state funding cuts:
I'll give you three guesses as to which is staffed by AFSCME employees.
The reason those are always the first to get cut is that people will scream the loudest about it.
When I had a poll taker ask about proposed cuts to the police force, I said “OK, what else?”
Kind of shocked her. There are places to cut, but by bringing out the cops and teachers first, most sheep will knuckle under and pay more taxes.