A California Republican

There are three current budget solutions being debated (or not) by the Legislature in California.

The first, a short-term solution, is to reduce spending and borrow from other state funds, sell state property, and anything else that will make the income/outcome side balance for now. I hate to say this, but it is the Republican solution. They say no new taxes. But they don’t have any other solutions. As has long been their problem - they have an ideology but not a plan.

The Democrats have a plan. They want more taxes and money from the federal government - a lot of it. I am going to say that the money from the federal government is a pipe dream. The new taxes are possible. But the problem with new taxes is that we are in an economic downturn. And new taxes will only lengthen that downturn. New taxes will also create more spending on schools, since they are constitutionally guaranteed a portion of that money. So that will create new, sustained spending in future years.

Then there is the plan by the Governor - which no one likes. There is a while deal about raising the sales tax by 1.5% and borrowing money from the state lottery. No one likes that plan, and no one is agreeing to it.

So of the three plans…..none is going to work.

What should California do? I think that they should start soliciting ideas from individuals who make budgets. Any family can tell you that hard choices have to be made, and those choices are going to involve unpopular decisions. One of the hard choices to make is to cut spending. I truely do not understand how Democrats can advocate for a reasonable plan without this element in it. I just don’t see it as reasonable. Ok - you don’t want to cut everything the Republicans do. But they don’t want to cut anything at all.

Why not roll everything back to the 2000 levels? The cost of living in CA is going down, along with the housing prices. Instead of having the state offer programs where low-income people can get cars and cheap insurance, offer them a program on discounted transit. Instead of simply giving people money, require that they attend training in something as a pre-requisite to being on welfare or public assistance for more than 2 months. Have them go learn how to be a construction worker by working with Cal-Trans on all those new infrastructure projects. Have those with college degrees learn to be teachers. Have those with no other training learn to be office assistants for correctional facilities (which desperately need office techs and cannot get them). There are tons of ways to provide assistance that will help get people off the assistance, rather than what CA does - and simply keeps providing them assistance. This will lower the need for social services eventually. And it will provide skilled workers for holes in our economy. Even better - most of these solutions will provide more members for the unions (I hate unions) so Democrats can support it.

In the meantime - cut programs to the 2000 levels. Firefighters make 2.5 times their normal pay on over-time. Most of us make 1.5 times, if that, in over-time pay. But they get to make 2.5 times. That seems a little ridiculous. Especially when OT counts any time spent sleeping while they are away from their home station. It just seems a tad excessive. It isn’t like there aren’t a ton of people that want to be firefighters. They don’t need to pay them that much in order to have the positions filled. Firefighters are like NFL cheerleaders - there are a lot more people who want to be one than there are chances to be one - so you can pay them less. But the state doesn’t understand this when they are bargaining with the union, and always gives them a raise and more money. That’s good fiscal responsibility.

As for a plan - I am telling you - it is a spending problem, not an income problem. The state takes in so much income. They need to figure out where the money should go - responsibly, and make those choices. They are going to be hard, and someone is going to get less money, but they are decisions that need to be made.

We elected these people to make these tough decisions. I am not a legislator (nor do I want to be) because I don’t want to make these decisions. But they wanted this job - so do the job already and let’s stop having the continual structural deficit that CA has.