Feb 09 2009
The Budget Still Remains Unbalanced
There are several budget deadlines coming this month.
The first one has already passed: The Governor called a Special Session for the California State Legislature to deal with the out-of-balance state budget. They had 45 days to solve the problem or be barred from considering other bills. Today marks the 96th day since that Special Session was called.
Later this month, on the 13th, the Controller is going to have to start issuing IOUs wehere possible. The state will run out of money, and bad checks cannot be written. Therefore, people are going to get IOUs.
Also happening this month is Lincoln’s Birthday celebration - a day that state workers traditionally get off. It happens this Thursday. So if the Legislature wants to save some of the money proposed by the Governor in the furlough plan, it has to pass a budget that would be signed before Thursday - or else state workers are going to take that day off. Then there will be no money saved for that day.
The majority leaders in the Senate and Assembly say there will be a budget vote later this week. No one knows if there are any Republican votes for the budgets that are being proposed. There probably are not, otherwise the leaders would have said they had some Republican votes and the budgets will pass. The statements the leaders have made are not that optomistic. Therefore, it leads you to believe that there are no Republican votes for these plans - which means there are no plans.
And to get Republicans to vote, the Democrats would have to have all the Democrats in the California Legislature vote for the plan. It is unclear whether that will happen. Two Democrats hold onto their seats by very slim majorities - Hueber and the one from San Ramon Valley - and they were allowed to sit off the last budget vote so that they didn’t have to vote to raise taxes on their constituents.
Good luck getting anything passed.
