Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at Democratic Diva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.

Imagine a plant in your state announcing it was closing and taking 5,000 jobs with it. That is the shock to the economy that Arizona can expect with budget bills introduced yesterday by the Republican tea party majority legislature. The bills were rushed through committee hearings with less than 24 hours notice to the public. The 5,000 state jobs cut or lost through attrition is just the start of it. Here are some other lowlights of the GOP proposed budget:

• 28 million in cuts to K-12 education.
• Refusal to fund Gov. Jan Brewer’s request for assistance to third graders not reading at grade level.
• Elimination of a program to study effectiveness of  private vs. public prisons. (Arizona has had many problems with private  prisons, including an escape in 2010 in which the escapees murdered two  people in New Mexico.)
• Refusal to reinstate drastic reimbursement cuts to  caregivers of severely disabled residents.

(If you live in Arizona, call your elected leaders and let them know you oppose these attacks on working families. Click here to find out how to contact your state senator and representatives.)

Brewer is also a Republican and not known for supporting generous government programs. But this budget plan is so harsh that Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson called it “short-sighted and reckless.”

The legislative budget proposal neglects our state’s most critical needs in public safety, education and health care.

Arizona currently has a budget surplus, due mostly to a temporary sales tax hike passed in 2010. Many Arizonans want cuts to education and health care restored but tea party lawmakers here take their cues from Grover Norquist, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Goldwater Institute, not the the people so they are pressing for more cuts to important programs and tax cuts for their rich donors.

Democrats in the Arizona legislature can’t do much about it since the GOP has a 2/3 majority in both houses and they generally refuse to include Democrats in any negotiations. They did express their outrage in a press statement of their own.

“For the past few years Arizona ’s tea party leadership has claimed they had no choice but to make the most devastating cuts to education in our state’s history. Now that there’s a surplus and they aren’t restoring education funding, we can see they actually wanted to make those cuts,” said Arizona Senate Minority Leader David Schapira.

Here’s Senate Minority Whip Paula Aboud:

Instead of investing in our kids’ schools and the future success of Arizona, tea party legislators are letting them twist in the wind while they give away yet another special-interest tax cut. This budget reflects a power struggle between the tea party governor and Legislature. Rather than meeting the needs of struggling Arizonans, this budget creates no new jobs nor does it improve our trained workforce. In fact, it eliminates more than 5,000 state jobs. What is glaringly lacking is investment in our economic engines, the universities, working families and the health needs of children. Arizonans need to speak up and ask for a real budget that addresses the true needs of our state.