Posted on 07/08/2009 7:50:45 AM PDT by SmithL
If the May 19 special election scared Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers into action, they aren't showing it.
Fifty days after voters rejected a Capitol driven ballot package in a rebuke of Sacramento politics, California lacks a budget-balancing agreement and is paying bills with IOUs for the second time since the Great Depression.
Democrats and Republicans continue to squabble over how deep to cut state services and whether to use the crisis as an opportunity to enact permanent changes that shrink state government. They have shifted back to closed door meetings after reaching few deals in public.
In public, they blame each other.
Despite their postelection promises of a quick deal and a transparent process, budget dynamics remain the same as ever, driven by ideological loyalties that have long made it difficult to reach compromise.
"The gravitational pull of budget negotiations is against compromise," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
"You have four legislative leaders, each of whom is encouraged every day by their members to stick to their guns. If every single legislator faithfully represented the voters and interests who put them into office, there will never, ever be a state budget."
Technically, lawmakers in February enacted a $92 billion state budget for the new fiscal year that started last week. But they have to find $26 billion in new solutions because voters rejected $6 billion of their original ideas and the economy grew worse than their outdated projections.
They face more time pressure this year because the state does not have enough cash to pay all of its bills and began issuing IOUs last week, with interest.
Fitch Ratings, a Wall Street agency, downgraded the state's credit rating Monday in response.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
COOL: Minus 5 today on Ras.
Where California is today, the rest of the country will be in 5 years.
Apparently your ODS is getting a little out of hand.
The leftist ideologues that run our state don’t care what the people vote for or say.
“...don’t care what the people vote for or say.”
Nor do the ones in Washington. I think it is past time to apply a boot to some hiney.
This is the problem. "Interests" represent the largest waste of money in the state.
After Ahnold is RECALLED, we need a new governor who's motto is "Slash and Burn!" in order to get things back in line.
[COOL: Minus 5 today on Ras.]
I’m disappointed, I thought the crosover to negative numbers would happen in June :)
I expect Obama to make Bush look like Mr. Popularity a year from now. The collapse can’t happen fast enough.
Hope the numbers for THE ONE look really grim in August.
All we can hope for is that moderate DEMS get scared.
Put it this way -
significant drop in popularity after serving only 13% of his term.
I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of Californians are not against higher taxes, but rather against higher taxes for them.
Poor people like taxing rich people, non-smokers like taxing smokers, and stupid people like taxing corporations, blissfully unaware of who actually pay corporate taxes.
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