Reading Sen. Roger Katz’s column ( “Democrats sing Groucho Marx song about welfare reform,” April 3), one word kept coming to mind, “chutzpah”! For those unfamiliar with this Yiddish expression, it means “unmitigated gall or brazenness beyond imagination.”

In contrast to Katz’s assertions about Democrats, Gov. Paul LePage and his legislative enablers appear to epitomize Groucho Marx’s description of politics: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

The voting record of Katz, R-Augusta, contradicts his claims about the supposedly good ideas coming from our chief executive. I would remind him that the two-year budget that LePage submitted was so horrendous and so filled with bad ideas that even legislative Republicans declined to support it. The Legislature had to do the work that LePage and Finance Commissioner Sawin Millett were incapable of doing, and the new budget had to be approved with the Legislature, including Katz, voting to override the governor’s veto.

Attending the sessions of the Health and Human Services Committee that Katz mentions, I found it was the Republicans on that committee who were unreasonable and unwilling to discuss realistic solutions.

Louis T. SigelGardinerDemocratic candidate for Maine Senate District 14


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