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Posted on 06/15/2003 6:14:26 PM PDT by Libloather
Unlikely New Budget in Time for Deadline
Sun Jun 15, 5:52 PM ET
Sue McGuire for KCBS-740 AM
(KCBS)--There is still no state budget. Sunday is the constitutional deadline but the state capital is nearly empty.
Lawmakers remain deadlocked over tax hikes versus spending cuts to ease the state's $38 billion deficit.
Governor Gray Davis has spent most of the weekend with his financial advisers. "I want the state to go forward not backwards and I believe that it is everyone's responsibility whose salaries are paid by the taxpayers to come together and pass a budget on time. I'm ready. I'm waiting for them to come back and I'm ready to work every day," said the governor.
Gov. Davis says he is confident lawmakers will get the job done by July 1st.
The governor says a tax increase is the only remaining issue on the table.
He wants to include $18 billion in spending reductions and $ 8 billion in revenue hikes.
"We are at a crisis of monumental proportions right now," said Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-Livermore.
But if it's such a monumental crisis, why aren't they in Sacramento?
"We're on two hour call to return to Sacramento at any time that there looks like there's movement," said Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View.
The legislature has missed the June 15th deadline many more times than it's made it. The deadline that really counts is July 1st, the start of the new fiscal year. No budget then means no money to pay for the workings of state government.
California voters want it both ways -- low taxes and lots of state services.
Take Patrice Waugh from Oakland. She doesn't want the sales tax to increase, or to pay a higher vehicle-licensing fee for her car.
"It's already high enough," she says.
But she doesn't want to lose the services she already has.
"We do not need to cut any more police officers. We need as much as we can," she says. "Also the teachers. Our schools are going down now in Oakland, and we really need to keep good teachers in our schools.
She admits she wants it both ways.
"I do," she says.
She's not alone, according to a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. It shows the majority of voters oppose service cuts, as well as raising the vehicle license fees, and raising the sales tax. But they support a cigarette tax hike.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides says the voters simply aren't being educated enough by their leaders.
"I don't fault the voters," he says. "I think the case has to be brought to them. I think in the next two weeks the case we need to bring is: education is important. Transportation, parks, the quality of life is important, and we ought to be able to fight for that kind of budget."
State Senate President John Burton, D-San Francisco, is more direct, as is his style.
"At some point, people are going to have to decide whether they want any kind of a state government or not," he says. "If you want to go into a restaurant and you don't want to pay for the meal, then you can't order the food. So if people don't want any cuts in very important services, as the Democrats do not want to do, then we've got to find a way to pay for them."
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If this lie is repeated often enough, does it become true?
Working, taxpaying, traditional American families want low taxes.
Parasites want free stuff.
You can always tell when a column (like this one) has been inspired by the latest DNC talking points memo because these two very different groups are lumped together as "California voters", as if the parasites want lower taxes and the taxpayers want lots of free stuff.
LOL, the problem with this lame soundbite is that Burton wants working taxpayers to go into the restaurant and pay for other peoples' meals. What a scumbag.
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