Posted on 12/14/2007 4:02:10 PM PST by SmithL
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today he plans to declare a fiscal emergency next month in the face of a $14 billion budget shortfall, clearing the way for his administration and lawmakers to make immediate mid-year spending cuts in state services.
The governor, during a speech about health care in Long Beach, said the fiscal pain would be spread "across the board" but that passage of a long-awaited, health-care reform plan in the meantime would ease impacts on the poor who depend on Medi-Cal, government-subsidized health insurance.
"We are going to call this January for a fiscal emergency when the legislators come back" Schwarzenegger said. "We will make that announcement next week some time with the legislative leaders. We will address that."
Voters gave California's governor the power to declare a fiscal emergency when they passed Proposition 58 three years ago. Today's announcement marks the first time Schwarzenegger has exercised the authority.
The proposition permits the governor to declare an emergency when revenues are substantially below what was anticipated upon signing of the budget. The state spending plan for the 2007-08 fiscal year that began July was signed in August.
But since that time, the economy has softened, due largely to a downturn in the housing market.
Legislators, who are already scheduled to return for the second-year of their two-year, 2007-08 session in January, will consider the fiscal emergency on a separate track, aside from other business, called a special session.
"We will take it seriously and respond," said Alicia Trost, a spokeswoman for Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Under Proposition 58, the Democrat-dominated Legislature actually has little choice.
"If the Legislature fails to pass and send to the governor legislation to address the budget problem within 45 days, it would be prohibited from acting on any other bills or adjourning in joint recess until emergency fiscal legislation was passed," Trost said.
The Republican governor estimated the budget deficit at up to $14 billion.
State agencies were recently warned to prepare for sizable, across-the-board cuts.
The state's gap between revenues and spending has become a perennial problem -- one that Schwarzenegger vowed to solve when he became governor during an unprecedented recall election in 2003.
Paging Tom McClintock!
Ditto that.
Ahnold has to try and clean up the mess he’s made.
It is so much fun watching California politics from a distance.
Austrian dog can’t hunt......this is what happens when people elect a schill calling himself a republican.......
This is what happens when the RINOS demand a liberal Republican on the premise that a true conservative cannot get elected. Tom McClintock would not have allowed this to happen.
Considerable response already to the other thread.
Schwarzenegger Will 'Declare Fiscal Emergency' In Weeks
NBC11 ^ | 12/14/07 | Not given
Posted on 12/14/2007 2:37:26 PM PST by SpringheelJack
Start with firing the hundreds of state attorneys, and the hundreds of others standing around the capital all day long, that seem to move from room to room as if lost.
Then cut about 50,000 state employee positions. What's left of them, reduce their tax paid wages, their generous tax paid benefits and state pensions.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
An excellent idea. Also, Arnold could tell them that he can either cut expenditures by cutting their wages and beni's or by deporting the illegal aliens who continue to suckle from the public teat. Given that choice, I'll bet no one with his job on the line would hesitate to personally escort his nanny or gardener to the border.
When was the last Republican President not to run a deficit?
I know one actor that made a successful move into politics.
Now I know one actor that tried and failed....and failed miserably.
All those steroids must have been too much for the brain....
I'll be back......
And driving more of the disease north.....towards me.
There should be a migration limit......
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