Among those feeling anxious about a possible state government shutdown, are people who may lose access to life-saving health-care coverage while the Legislature still works on passing a budget. The needs of the patients we see at Community Health Care in Tacoma will not pause on July 1, nor will our need for critical resources to provide for our patients.

There is no time like the present for legislators to come to an agreement. I urge them to pass a reasonable budget that not only keeps critical services running, but looks to the future by protecting the state’s health-care safety net and expanding Medicaid to ensure people can remain healthy and productive.

(Flentge is president and CEO of Community Health Care.)

Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life in the state Legislature.

The No. 1 job of our legislators is to enact a state budget. Forget about setting policy, proclaiming a special day, bill-signing photo ops. And apparently our current state legislators can’t perform their most important job. As a Washington resident, I’m beyond appalled – whatever that is.

So I have a suggestion: If the Legislature doesn’t pass a budget within its normal session time, each legislator starts to pay a daily fine. We start at $1,000 a day and double the fine every day the special session continues. It won’t take very many extra days until we’re talking about “real money” – which would be an obvious boon to our state coffers.

Let’s really hold our legislators accountable for their actions or lack thereof, and raise some money for the programs the residents want supported. If this were in place, I don’t think we’d be looking at a second special session, do you?

I noted one thing that was not mentioned. Being as the Legislature is unable to come to agreement on the budget, all facilities to the Senate and House chambers should be shut down until they can. This should include air conditioning, heat and possibly all services, lights, water, etc.

Maybe if they have to experience a little discomfort, an agreement could be forthcoming.

Budgets are about values; they are a reflection of our priorities. The House budget puts children and communities first; the Senate budget keeps costly tax loopholes open at the expense of the most vulnerable. We can’t protect special interest tax breaks while cutting access to essential services for children and families.

Many families in our community and across the state struggle to obtain basic essentials. For them, every dollar or can of food truly makes a difference.

Your neighbor or family member might be a food bank client, but too embarrassed to tell anyone. They might choose between purchasing food, paying a medical bill or their mortgage or rent. Everyone needs help sometimes, but asking for help isn’t easy.

People from all walks of life – seniors, children, volunteers, veterans, the working poor, individuals with disabilities and families – are struggling just to make ends meet. Budgets are about people and impact the lives of the citizens and communities of this state.

We urge our legislators to help rebuild the health of our communities by placing the priority on the thousands of children and families in Washington rather than protecting tax loopholes.

(Elliott is the advocacy chair of the Pierce County Human Services Coalition.)

As a mother focused on providing a bright future for my kids, I believe Gov. Jay Inslee has his priorities in the right place with his list of proposed budget loophole closures.

Closing a lucrative and outdated tax loophole for oil companies so that we can fund education is only fair. These oil companies are making profits many times the size of our education budget shortfall, and should do more to support funding our children’s education.

This loophole is also about our values as a state. Are we committed to funding education and our kids’ future? Or are we content to give massive handouts to profitable, polluting oil companies? We have to pay taxes on the fuel we buy; so should the oil companies.

Can’t anyone do the math? Our current federal spending is about $4 trillion per year. Sequestration will require a reduction of about $80 billion, or about a 2 percent reduction.

If your family brings in about $50,000 per year, that means a spending reduction of about $83 per month. That is about what it costs a couple to dine out at a quality restaurant. Come on, folks. You are being lied to by some of the best con artists in the world. Wake up!

Now come issues such as the sequester. It doesn’t matter that it harms the country. The tea party doesn’t believe it. They believe taxes of any kind are a sin. To read Paul Ryan’s budget proposal with its draconian cuts to Medicare is shocking.

I guess they believe old people are disposable, no matter what those people may have accomplished in life. The rich would have to support them; what a shocking concept!

They can blame President Obama all they want, but they refused to put taxes on the table. So there was no position of compromise Obama could take that would work for them. Any proposal he would make would be a nonstarter.

As polls show, the Republican Party will suffer greatly from its actions. Last I saw, 19 percent supported it.

The GOP needs to look to past leaders such as Ronald Reagan, who believed taxes were always part of the picture. He also advocated that the wealthy pay more taxes because they were better able to pay.

If moderates don’t take charge of their party, the GOP will become a nonplayer. Democrats will be able to do what they want.

The government only works well when both sides work together. Compromise is the key.

Harold Meyerson falsely claimed that President Herbert Hoover “cut spending” to balance the budget during the Great Depression. In reality, Hoover actually increased federal spending from $3.1 billion in 1929, when he took office, to $4.6 billion in 1933, when he left office. Hoover also ran up big budget deficits.

While Hoover’s administration had inherited a $734 million budget surplus, it quickly turned that into a deficit, which reached $2.7 billion in 1932, and $2.6 billion in 1933. Government spending doubled as a percentage of the economy, which shrank rapidly.

For more on this, see The Atlantic article, “Hoover Was No Budget Cutter.”

(Bader, an attorney with a degree in economics, once worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

These obligation will not be borne by the workers and the retirees of today, but by today’s youth.

Today’s youth voted overwhelmingly in November for President Obama. Perhaps it is now time for the president to help the constituency that supported him. Instead of flying around the nation speaking about the doom and gloom of a 2 percent cut in spending, perhaps it is now time for him to attempt to lead and solve real problems.

There is still time to modify entitlement programs and to make them more sustainable for future generations. There is time to change the funding sources and to rearrange the rest of our nation’s finances to withstand this eventual onslaught.

It is now time for the president to stop demonizing jet owners and oil companies and begin to look for adult solutions. Young people’s decision to vote for him doesn’t have to be a mistake. Wouldn’t it be great if they could someday look back on their vote and be happy with their decision? There is still time.

I almost hurled my Cheerios this morning while reading the drivel concerning the budget. The writer blames Republicans and predicts a tsunami of pain because of a desire on their part to see President Obama fail.

Our problems cannot be viewed as Democrats vs. Republicans. The real battle is conservative ideology vs. progressive ideology. The extreme factions will never prevail, but they serve a useful purpose by forcing the dialogue. At the moment our dialogue is stalled.

I found it very offensive for the writer to inject race into the equation: “They want America to fail under our first black president … they desperately fear the fall of white male dominion.”

This is not about color. It is about the economic stability of our country. Obama got his tax increase. Republicans agreed to kick the can down the road so spending reductions could be negotiated.

Keep in mind the new tax is projected to bring in more than $600 billion in revenue. Now the president wants additional taxes before he will agree to spending cuts. The sequestration will only impact $85 billion of spending. Even if it goes through we will still spend more in 2013 than we did in 2012.

Currently, 45 percent of our tax dollars are spent paying interest on our debt. If sequestration becomes a reality because of political impasse, it will look like a day at the beach compared to what our kids will be facing without any meaningful entitlement reform. Keep race out of this.