CA: Final state spending plan features borrowing, not deep cuts

Sac Bee ^ | 7/27/04 | AP - Sacramento

[NormsRevenge]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger began the year vowing to cut, cut, cut. But the final spending plan heading for a vote this week in the Legislature relies on billions of dollars in borrowing and one-time savings to balance and avoids most of the deep reductions Schwarzenegger proposed in January. Battered by a monthlong budget battle, Schwarzenegger gave ground to the Legislature's Democratic majority in fashioning the last details of the estimated $103 billion spending plan.

Schwarzenegger agreed to lift an enrollment cap at state universities, to drop a proposal to slash wages of home health care workers and to provide a cost of living increase to welfare recipients. These concessions came after he already gave up most of his plans to cut health and welfare programs and to trim union benefits. Still, administration officials said Tuesday, the new budget closes a deficit estimated in January at $17 billion without raising taxes. It also wins $2.6 billion in savings from cities and counties over the next two years, another $2 billion in savings from public schools this year and includes a $1 billion one-time payment and $300 million in ongoing support from Indian tribes with gambling casinos.

While many lawmakers don't like big chunks of the budget, they also said California's spending crisis didn't start overnight and won't be solved quickly either.

[CasearianDaoist]

But the Rats will turn just turn around, fight it through the courts and overturn it that way. This is particulalry true with labor laws. It is not that simple.

[William Tell]

CasearianDaoist said: "I am interested because I want to see Arnold succeed. I want to tell you something: your manners are putrid - you should work on them."

You suggested that it would be easy to grasp what the consequences of the "operations" of the state ceasing would be. But you fail to state any. What is unmannerly about asking you to defend your statement?

Most fire services are supplied by county and city government. The same is true of most police services.

Fighting forest fires is handled at the state level. But even that could be reduced considerably if we abandoned our policy of letting the forests grow wild and the consequent fuel load.