California budget measures voted down
I guess Schwarzenegger is just not as convincing in a tie.
Governor Schwarzenegger had high hopes when he laid out plans in the California for out to deal with his state’s huge deficit.
Turns out his hopes were too high. Voters rejected the California budget measures by a pretty hefty margin.
Read their lips: no new sales tax
One measure in the California budget “would have capped spending while extending a sales tax increase and boosting a rainy day fund,” according to Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. About two-thirds of California voters rejected that measure.
On other measures, the Business Journal reports:
Sent to a defeat by a slightly smaller majority were measures to provide $9.3 billion in supplemental payments for local school districts and colleges, borrow $5 billion against future lottery revenue and shift revenue earmarked for mental-health and children’s programs to the general fund.
One gets by for the California budget
There was one California budget measure that voters approved just as quickly as you can get approved for a no faxing payday loan. That measure said there would be no pay raises for elected state officials as long as there is a budget deficit.
Three out of four California voters had no problem with that one.
So what’s plan B?
The rejected budget measures amount to a projected California budget deficit of $21 billion. The rejected measures would have cut that down to about $15 billion — not exactly a stellar improvement.
The governor is calling for an increase of $2.3 billion in budget cuts for education on top of $3 billion in cuts that were already planned. He has also called for a $400 million cut in prison costs by shifting inmates to local and federal authorities, writes the Business Journal.
It’s a rough tradeoff. California voters made it clear that they don’t want more taxes, but I highly doubt they’d be in favor of budget cuts for education. Ahem, I mean more budget cuts for education.
Schools to suffer
[adsense float=”right”ABC News has a story headlined “California Schools Likely to Suffer from Budget Cuts.” Reporter Lillian Kim writes a few projections about what could happen as a result of decreased school funding. “Tens of thousands of teachers could get laid off,” she writes.
Exactly what programs and services will be cut and by how much is something that will be the subject of intense negotiations in the coming weeks. And all sides are holding out hope, that the election results will spark a new level of dialogue.
Look to ‘the illegals’
Californians do have some interesting ideas of their own. This comment was left on the Business Journal’s story by a poster using the handle “No Illegals” wrote:
Now, end ALL programs that support illegal aliens directly or indirectly and reduce our tax loss by billions of dollars.
Demand E-verify for ALL employers to humanely removed illegals from the workplace and allow Millions of Americans to find needed work.
Also, give yourselves a needed 20% paycut to come in line with the rest of the states for elected state officials pay.
Here’s the thing about government spending – it’s like anything else, you either have to reduce spending or increase income. Income for governments is taxes. Now when they have an enormous drop in revenue, like the state of California has, those are the two options, or a combination of the two. There is no magic solution, and the citizens have made their choice known. The trouble is going to become just what they are willing to accept in the way of cuts, because there is no way the state government of California is going to be able to sustain itself if they don’t cut a lot of programs without an increase in revenue of some kind to buffer the loss. Perhaps legalizing marijuana could do it, but that’s only going to make a small dent in the $20 billion they have to make up, and raising income taxes even $10 per person per paycheck isn’t going to do it. The cuts that are going to happen are going to be unpopular, that’s for sure.