Alanis Morissette’s song “Isn’t It Ironic” comes to mind while reading this:
Arnold Schwarzenegger stormed into office during California’s last budget crisis, promising to “end the crazy deficit spending” so the state would never go over the financial cliff again. But four years later, California is back in the same spot.
The cooling economy has opened up a projected $14.5 billion deficit over the next 18 months, and the governor proposed this week to cut school spending, release 22,000 prisoners early and shut dozens of state parks.
The irony is rich: He is facing a repeat of the financial crisis that undid Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, the man Schwarzenegger ousted in a turbulent recall election.
“It is poetic justice,” said Garry South, a former Davis adviser, remembering Schwarzenegger’s taunts in the 2003 election. “All the hullaballoo he made during the recall, putting up ads saying he would cut up the state’s credit cards and stop this crazy deficit spending _ and he ultimately didn’t do either one.”
Far from solving California’s systemic budget problems, Schwarzenegger has taken several actions that have made them worse. Just like Davis, Schwarzenegger cut taxes but not spending, which has risen 30 percent since he took office. That ensured that when tax revenue tapered off, the budget gap would reappear.
Of course the fact is that he tried to fix the budget years ago by asking the State legislature to put up spending caps. Being a Socialist state they refused, and the Democrats all across the land loved them for it. He did pass a light version of the cap along with a 15 billion dollar bond bail out which he said would ensure the mess would never happen again.
Clearly not believing his own rhetoric, he came back with a second ballot measure in 2005 to impose a hard spending cap and give the governor authority to cut the budget in the middle of the year. But public employee unions, led by teachers, shot it down, and the governor’s approval rating dropped by half.
When the good times rolled back and brought a $9 billion tax surplus, he didn’t bank it all. Instead, he gave most of it to education to pacify the teachers.
And there you go. His approval rating dropped, the legislature refused to work with him, AND when he had all that surplus he didn’t do the right thing and bank it all.
While Tom McClintock should of been elected I can’t blame Arnold for everything here. Oh, I blame him plenty, but not for everything. The ignorant people of this state keep electing Socialist legislators who keep giving more and taxing more. When Arnold tried to fix it he was run out of Congress with pitchforks. But what I can fault him for is not fighting for those caps. Not going back against those pitchforks like Conan and taking on the Democrats. It would of been the end of his career here in California, for sure, but he would of went down with his principals intact. Instead he changed his principals to stay in office and became a Democrat.
Oh, and one other thing, it may be a good time to look at how much of the 14.5 billion dollar shortfall comes from all the handouts to illegal’s.
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Investing in schools and teachers, IT IS SOOO WRONG !!
You can never trust anyone remotely connected to a Kennedy. Sooner or later the dark side will show up.
The above poster talks about “investing” in schools and education. He meant throwing money at a system that doesn’t educate but insures the people responsible for this continue to suck more out of the trough.
Thank you Banjo… If money solved education problems Washington D.C. schools would lead the nation instead of being so far behind the rest:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2008/18src.h27.html
Trying to pacify the CA teacher’s unions with billions more to waste seems to be the wrong way to solve the problem.
Although I tend to agree with most of what you say, I live in a county where the Reservation Casinos virtually fund our high schools and community colleges and bring tons of non-tax money to our communities, yet there is an active group who wants to do away with Reservation protections and force the State and Counties to pick up the bill through higher taxes.
The money spent to fund illegals here is astronomical.
And there is no way that I’ve seen in recent memory to break the hold that the large counties, especially those of northern Calif. have on this state. Those who keep forcing the Pelosis and the Feinsteins on us.
California has two laws and one court order on school funding. The first law was the lotto. The voter approved lotto was suppose to give extra money for things like computers and updated science labs to the schools. Instead it went to the geneneral fund. The second law in a minimum funding law backed by the voters. The court order said that California was not putting the same percentage of money into schools in poor areas. Either money had to come from the schools that were getting more money or new money had to go to those schools. Other money that went to the schools was borrowed money. That money was suppose to go to the schools earlier when there was a crises. He promised to pay the schools back when the crises was over. The housing boom gave California enough money for the schools to be paid back.
Some of it is wasteful spending, for instance the Los Angeles school district is a huge fiscal disaster from building a $100 million school on a visually noticable toxic dump to paying huge rent for their district office, because they don’t want to use their own district head quarters building which has some cosmetic cracks in it.
California also has a court order for prison funding for healthcare to prisoners.
California also has never met a union it doesn’t like. The pay for government officials is outrageous. The average government employee for the last five years makes $32,800+$13,700 in benefits. The average American makes about $34,300. In Los Angeles the average goverment salary is $79,000.
From this, I would say a payroll freeze would be permanently needed.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/PUBLIC+PAYROLL+SOARS+LOCAL%2c+STATE+GOVERNMENT+WORKERS+REAP+BONANZA-a0114264020
The trouble is, since these are union jobs, the police, teachers and others could legally stop what they are doing and strike.