Posted on 01/13/2005 10:34:52 AM PST by NormsRevenge
In a sign of California's uneven economic recovery and changing political landscape, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's vow this week that higher taxes are "out of the question" barely raised a peep in a state with a $9.1 billion deficit.
With the exception of state Treasurer Phil Angelides, Democrats for now have dropped earlier calls for higher taxes to fix the budget. Instead, the Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, reacted to Schwarzenegger's budget proposal by talking about closing corporate tax loopholes and getting more federal dollars from Washington.
"You don't see us saying we're going to raise taxes," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez of Los Angeles, even as he criticized Schwarzenegger's spending cuts.
Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata of Oakland said Thursday he wouldn't rule out higher taxes but added: "If we jump up right now and say the ... cure is more money, people are going to stop listening to us." Political analyst Bruce Cain, of the University of California, Berkeley, said Democrats have "ceded the whole debate" to Republicans by not arguing that taxes must go up to protect services.
"If the Democrats don't make that argument, who's going to make that argument?" said Cain, head of UC's Institute of Governmental Studies.
Democrats' relative silence on taxes is a reflection of Schwarzenegger's enormous popularity - measured last fall at 65 percent approval - and the belief that California, despite an improving economy, still suffers from a reputation of harboring a hostile business climate.
UCLA economist Chris Thornberg said the state's economy could probably withstand higher taxes, but he said California's image could not. "If nothing else, California has horrible PR in other states," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
peep peep peep :-D
Apparently, all of their focus groups have shown that most legislators pushing for higher taxes could join Gray Davis in Rat Limbo or worse.
With all of the retirements of so called elite in the education rackets the past few months, these new retirees must have had similiar focus groups.
Just think what we are paying folks like John Burton and Vasconcellos in pension payouts?
6 figures, for sure, not bad after pillaging&plundering a state for years and years...
Gray will even get a pension after all his 'valuable' years of public service. madness, indeed.
ToTal ReFoRm .. or Bu$T :-]
If we could super glue a sock in their mouths, a six figure retirement with most of the older rats in our legislature would be a great investment.
Democrats aren't interested in being seen making the obvious problem worse.
They are only interested in sucking blood from California's fiscal cadaver only so long as they can remain relatively anonymous.
Now, there's a headline you don't see every day.
Be very scared and on guard when a Democrat says he does not want to raise taxes. This could be a trick.
Translation: they'd love to raise taxes but it doesn't help their image to be identified as the guys that made it happen.
In other words they mean to have their very powerful congressional delegation steal the money from the rest of us.
The times-standard had a AP piece about Elizabeth Hill saying there is a $5,000,000,000.00 discrepancy in Arnie's budget...
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