To the Editor:

Are you a Maine laborer, a teacher, a child care provider, retired, disabled, unemployed, underemployed, chronically ill or otherwise limited? There is something to consider in the upcoming Maine elections.

The 125th legislative session was a concerted effort to create an economy tailored to only a favored few. Several bills passed reducing wages, lowering workplace protections and reducing aid for Maine’s workers most needy: LD 1913 reduced access and benefits to severely injured Maine workers; LD 1725 weakened the unemployment system and penalizes laid-off workers; LD 1894 repealed bargaining rights for home-based child care providers; LD 1207 eliminated the ability of egg processing workers to organize; LD 849 reduced the top income tax for Maine’s wealthiest and reduces state revenue causing underfunding of schools, road and bridge repairs and towns while leaving figuring out how to fund it to future legislatures; LD 1746 cut services to working families, the elderly and children by reducing access to medicine and medical care for more than 5,000 seniors and people with disabilities, cut Head Start programs for children, eliminated health care for thousands of 19- and 20- year-olds, cut child care subsidies to nearly 2,000 children with working parents and eliminated MaineCare coverage for 14,000 low-income working parents.

If you are not wealthy or a CEO, there is little that will improve the quality of your lives coming from Gov. LePage or the current Republican side of the Legislature.

I don’t agree totally with any political establishment, and I don’t drink the Kool-Aid of partisan politics. Maine’s budget woes were not produced by workers, but by politicians. I simply support legislation that best benefits my family, friends, neighbors and Maine.

Bruce K. Hixon
Bowdoin