AM Alert: Voters boo budget, back ballot items in poll

SacBee: Capitol Alert ^ | 3/3/9 | Shane Goldmacher

[SmithL]

A new Field Poll shows that California voters are dissatisfied (55 percent) with the state budget passed by the Legislature last month. Those likely to vote in the May 19 budget special election are even more unhappy (65 percent).

The plan contains a broad swath of tax hikes and deep spending cuts.

Come to think of it, who are the 45 percent of the people satisfied with that budget?

The same poll shows initial support for all six items on that ballot.

Of course, support for Proposition 1A, the spending restriction measure which would extend the life of the tax increases, plunges by 23 percent when voters are told about the tax provision.

Lawmakers must have accidently left that out.

That's not what the odd-couple of the month -- the conservative Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the liberal Anthony Wright of Health Access -- think. They teamed together Monday to sue to change the ballot summary for the measure.

They even got a letter of support from UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff, he of Don't Think of an Elephant fame.

"In each case, the language prejudices voters towards passage of the proposition and toward the political and economic views of the proponents of the proposition," Lakoff wrote in a letter accompanying the suit.

Umm, wasn't that the point?

We've posted each of the propositions' polling numbers . And, as usual, Capitol Alert has the Field Poll's exclusive statistical tabulations.

Other poll highlights: 18 percent of voters think the state is headed in the right direction. The same percentage approves of the job the state Legislature is doing. Schwarzenegger's approval held steady at 38 percent since last September. The open-primary ballot measure on the 2010 ballot gets first-blush support from 58 percent...

[jiggyboy]

The plan contains a broad swath of tax hikes and deep spending cuts.

Folks be careful here. Spending cuts + tax hikes doesn't help the situation. These are just further examples of Sacramento's way of blaming the voters for any tax hikes that result.