A California Republican

The Governor released his new plan to balance the state budget. It is cuts, all cuts.

The cuts are not a bad thing. The state will only fund $7000 to UCSF Hastings law school; the bare minimum required under their promise to the Hastings family. The state will cut Cal Grants for new applicants and phase out current grant receivers. This simply means the state won’t give people money for college. There are grants and scholarships and loans from the federal government, and private programs out there. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The Governor plans to cut $1.6 billion from CalWorks, the welfare program which provides subsidies for children. This cut leads to a $4+ billion dollar loss in federal funds. This may seem like a ridiculous cut, but CalWorks is one program which is discretionary. There isn’t a lot of discretionary funding in the state budget, and these are some of the discretionary program where the Governor can cut, and not be in violation of state law.

The state parks would also lose their General Fund money. In a time when people are poorer, the state parks offer cheap vacations that people can afford. The state parks offer cheaper recreation than going to an amusement park of a day, the water slide, or even a movie. It stinks that the parks are going to get their General Fund cut, but it doesn’t mean they get no state support. They still receive money from the cigarrette tax and other Special Funds. It simply means that state parks are going to have to scale back.

There are already law suits. The SEIU has filed in federal court alleging that the state is engaging in discrimination by cutting programs to the elderly and disabled. The state is simply engaging in responsible fiscal spending by requiring that expenditures not exceed income. They aren’t discriminating, they are cutting where possible.

Overall, it is a plan with deep cuts. But it is a plan that is needed.

You can find out more about the plan at www.dof.ca.gov

What is a compromise? It is a situation where the parties to the argument both change their stances in order to reach a middle ground. It is not a situaiton where one party must compromise all their principles to agree with the other party. A compromise also offers a solution to a problem, and doesn’t merely put the problem off to the voters, or to another year.

The Legislature needs to take notice of this definition, and think about it when discussing what they are going to do to make the budget work.

A compromise is not changing the law, or working around the law, to try and get your way. Democrats are, once again, reviving the majority vote proposal. This is a proposal which would allow the Democrats to pass a budget package, with tax increase, so long as the total tax burdern doesn’t change. This means they can change the gas tax to a “fee” and then raise a new tax in place of the gas tax. Theoretically, this wouldn’t change the tax burden because one tax was eliminated while another was added - never mind that the onld tax got replaced with a fee.

The Legislature should look at the results of the special election in May and realize that voters don’t want to make the choices. Voters elect representatives, and it is the job of those representatives - our legislators - to make those decisions. They need to stop passing the buck to voters, or to the next fiscal year. Fancy borrowing schemes are over. Stop the nonsense, and create solutions.

The Republican leaders in both houses, the Assembly and the Senate, lost their positions over their stance on taxes. The Republican leaders agreed to new taxes, in order to get a spending cap put in place on the ballot. Instead of seeing this as a compromise, the leaders lost their position because they made a gamble on the ballot - and lost. This makes it highly unlikely that the Republicans will go for anything like this in the future.

So what are the leigslators going to do in order to come up with the 2/3 votes needed to make a budget package to fix the deficit that California is currently in? Below is a list of ideas from the Sacramento Bee - notice that not one of them includes eliminating Prop. 98 (rigid education funding formula) which takes up approximately half of the budget. That is certainly an option that needs to be explored, although it would likely copy the fate of Prop. 13 (see below). A compromise is needed, but how are they going to reach it?

Ideas for fixing the state budget