Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/09/schwarzenegger.html" target="_blank">http://blogs.usatoday.com/onde...ger.html</a> >>California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will veto a state budget passed after a 78-day stalemate, setting up a historic showdown with the Legislature. As the San Francisco Chronicle explains, the proposed budget sought to close a $17 billion deficit for the fiscal year that began July 1 without new taxes, a demand by Republicans. It did so by requiring all taxpayers to make earlier and larger tax payments to the state government. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, made the announcement this afternoon. The veto will mark the first time in modern history that a California governor has rejected a veto a state spending plan. The Democrat-controlled Legislature has said it is prepared to override a veto. Yesterday, about 12 hours before the last vote was taken at 2 a.m. today, the governor sent Assembly and Senate leaders a letter threatening the veto "I have been very clear this entire year that I would be unable to sign a budget without meaningful budget reform," the governor wrote, stressing that spending cuts were needed. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, also assailed the budget plan, saying this morning that it "gives gimmicks a bad name." "It's banana republic financing," Lockyer said. The spending plan relies on "phony money and phony estimates." Update at 7 p.m. ET: "When they send me the budget, I will veto it," Schwarzenegger said at a Capitol news conference, the Los Angeles Times reports. "If my veto is overriden," he said, " ... hundreds of bills will be vetoed."<< First off, I am glad to see the Legislative agree to no new taxes. But I am also glad the Governor Vetoed it. It was so poorly designed with more loopholes and gimmicks than any in history (Heck, see what the State Treasurer said above). As much as California need a new budget, it needs to be a better budget than the one that was passed. And it should be interesting to see what happens, the overriding of the Governor's Veto requires the exact same 2/3'rds vote that the original budget needed.
Originally Posted By Mrs ElderP Our budget process in CA is awful. Simply put, we want more than we are willing to pay for. Either we need to slash progams to the bone (and fundamentaly this means slashing education) or we need to rasise taxes. Income taxes, sales tax, somethings going to have to go up if we're not willing to cut education any more. And the reason I say education is that education is a fully half of the state budget. Prisons, state parks, roads, CHP, money from the state to the cities, medi-cal, everything else together doesn't equal education. So, California, what do you want?
Originally Posted By cmpaley I think it would be interesting to see where spending growth has been taking place. I'd bet that a lot of it is in sectors of the government Republicans love (law enforcement, prisons, etc.) and a smaller amount has been in sectors of the government Democrats support (services). Frankly, I think one piece of the ultimate solution would include a pay-as-you-go system that says, "you Reps/Dems want a new program? Either provide the funding stream through fees or new taxes or show what you are willing to cut to pay for it." All these new feel-good tough-on-crime programs cost MONEY...LOTS of it.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney >>and fundamentaly this means slashing education<< Do you realize how much our education budget has already been cut??? If the originally proposed education cuts go through, they will cut the music and sports programs completely from our Jr. High and High Schools in our town. Those activities help keep kids out of trouble. Our GATE program was cut several years ago to where it is practically a joke. It use to involve classroom pull-out for the GATE kids, now it's just a few extra activities a year. Nothing extra beyond that is available for the advanced kids. Our state education program will continue to suffer and the levels of education will continue to decline if the budget takes more cuts.
Originally Posted By ecdc This really looks like a tough situation. I don't envy Californians today. It's not like your taxes aren't already high. But who wants to cut education - it's not like there's an education party and an anti-education party.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>But who wants to cut education - it's not like there's an education party and an anti-education party.<< Well ... Nope, too easy.
Originally Posted By Mrs ElderP DyGDisney--I totally agree, I work for the school system, granted I'm just a sub, but I'm there in the schools. That's why I'm saying we absolutly have to raise taxes some how. We're getting sued over the prison system, no one wants education to suffer, health and human services tends to be federally mandated, and so on... everyone's got their finger in the pie, so the pie MUST get larger. This is an interesting chart, though it only goes through the 05/06 budget year. <a href="http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/BUD_DOCS/charts/chart-c.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/BUD...rt-c.pdf</a> I don't know what all the headings are, BT&H anyone? or Resources (is that the park system?) but I do know that CAYA/DCR is the prison system (California Youth Authority and Department of Corrections) and H&HS is health and human services--medical, medicade, welfare, all that stuff. There are minor changes all over the board, but I don't see any drastic changes from the 1995 to the 2005 budget, in terms of percentages. In terms of total amounts, you can see why the budget actually came in on time two years ago--they had a huge jump in income, and I think that continued to last year, and they spent it all! Broken system!!
Originally Posted By DyGDisney Mrs.ElderP, I also sub in the schools, and I have kids in school. Both of my kids are in GATE and are very bright. They get nothing (outside of their few GATE events) beyond what every other kid gets unless their teacher puts extra effort into making sure they do. Most teachers do not have the time or inclination to do this. This is making me actually look forward to Jr. High a little because at least they have advanced math!
Originally Posted By DyGDisney I'm not opposed to taxes, but with the economy the way it is, where will we get the money to pay the taxes? Our state needs to do better -- for the people and especially for our kids. Where do the states with no sales tax get their money?
Originally Posted By DyGDisney I think our Government is not doing it's job properly, overspending in areas where they need to cut back I'm sure. If it were a household budget, and times became tough, you'd figure out where to cut back. Stop going to Starbucks, reduce your Netflix subscription from 3 at a time to 1 at a time, cut back to basic cable. But would we feed our kids less to save money while continuing to go out to eat on our lunchbreak? This is what our government is doing, and wants to do -- cut back on our kids' "food" which they need to thrive and do well in life, while continuing to "go out to lunch".
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "First off, I am glad to see the Legislative agree to no new taxes.' A short-sighted POV if there ever was one. With a budget shortfall the size of California's, cutting alone will not solve the problem.
Originally Posted By ecdc On the topic of California's economy, here's a serious question. Why the hell does my fruit get confiscated in Yeermo or whatever it is? I can't drive to DL without fruit! And I never know what's ok to bring and what's not ok to bring. My kids would love to dine on Lunchables the whole way, but it ain't gonna happen. Solve that crisis for me.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Don't drive. Take Jet Blue from Salt Lake to Long Beach and avoid the fruit checkpoints.
Originally Posted By ecdc You know, just for fun I looked up flights. They're cheaper than I expected, even for four of us. SPP may have just saved me about 17 hours in travel time...
Originally Posted By Ursula As a mostly democrat, I agree with the Governator. It wasn't right yet. My legislators need to fix it and not just push something through that isn't right. How about closing more tax loopholes before looking at raising taxes against the board and damaging education further? We have some of the richest companies...how about looking at luxury taxes? There HAS to be a better way.
Originally Posted By gadzuux >> "First off, I am glad to see the Legislative agree to no new taxes.' << Where do you propose finding $17 billion to cut out of the budget? "No new taxes" has been the mantra of card-carrying republicans since Bush 41 - in 1988 - twenty years. It doesn't even pretend to be sensible and reasoned policy, and over time just seems like an unreasonable demand.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "You know, just for fun I looked up flights. They're cheaper than I expected, even for four of us. SPP may have just saved me about 17 hours in travel time..." Well, I wasn't kidding. Glad I could help.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>You know, just for fun I looked up flights. They're cheaper than I expected,<< But don't forget to figure in all the new fees for luggage, snacks, blankets, drinks, magazines, seat backs, oxygen ....
Originally Posted By fkurucz ^^and don't forget to pray that they haven't been illegally skimping on aircraft maintenance.
Originally Posted By Mrs ElderP Looking at the budget documents through the '05/'06 year is somewhat enlightening. For one thing when moving from the 05-06 to 06-07 revenes went up more than 12.5% (from 79 to 90 billion). I know that from 06-07 to 07-08 the renenues jumped again, I don't know how much though. I just know that they went up, because last year was one of the few years that the budget was in on time. I would love to know what got added in 06 and in 07 and why they can't go away again? Either way, k-12 gets 40%, so sure they're enivitably going to be suffering this year. However, **theorectically** the schools should have gotten a fair amount of extra money in the past two years. However, have you heard of programs being added or is it just "ouch, ouch we're hurting"?? Where does the money go??
