This is the area where I'm most upset with Arnold. For heaven's sake, if the governor can't cut spending at least a little bit, with all the advantages he now has, then he may NEVER cut it. Cripes, popularity is meant to be USED (by politicians).
True. Its like the old adage has it, "use it or lose it." Arnold will be never this popular again so its time for him to start putting the screws to the Democrats in Sacramento. Because they need government more than Republicans do. Its THEIR livelihood.
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina has kept his state's increase to a mere one percent. In recent history, only one politician has done better. Ronald Reagan actually cut spending by an average of 1.3 percent per year over his two terms.
Sanford faced a $155 million deficit from his predecessor the day he entered office, together with threats from credit rating agencies to lower the state's borrowing status. To close this gaping hole, he engineered passage of a "Fiscal Discipline Act" through a hostile legislature. He negotiated $139 million in repayment and issued 106 vetoes to cut spending to close the remainder of the gap. While the legislature overrode all but one veto, the governor did not stop there. He walked into the statehouse rotunda with a live pig under each arm to ask why the legislators could not cut unnecessary pork spending. While the spenders were squealing, the people loved it and granted the governor a 70 percent approval rating.
This is how it's done, not with posturing and handwaving, not with secret deals in a smoke filled tent, but with line by line deconstruction of bureaucratic empires. The Arndroids keep excusing Schwarzenegger with the Slave Party majority in the California legislature, while both Reagan and Sanford showed results under the same conditions. Submit a truly balanced budget, swing the veto ax on the contorted results out of the legislature, and pull apart every bureaucratic empire you can find, one by one.
All it takes is courage and priciple. Arnold hasn't either.