CA: State GOP refuses to budge on taxes, unlike Republicans across the U.S.

SACRAMENTO - In at least a half-dozen states, Republican governors and legislators have bucked their party's aversion to taxes and reluctantly pushed increases to deal with unprecedented budget shortfalls that have wracked state governments.

Republicans aren't budging on their ``no new taxes'' pledge. Democrats, for their part, oppose deeper spending cuts. The standoff has paralyzed the Legislature, which -- short of a miracle -- will fail to meet its constitutional deadline to enact a budget by midnight tonight.

Oregon has the balanced budget clause in the state constitution. Oregon also has the 6th highest per-capita spending on government in the nation along with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. The RINO's in the state house and senate are getting ready to cave on an sales tax bill also which will destroy all of the border business Oregon gets from the out-of-staters that shop here to save money. (Oregon right now has no sales tax) Oregon has had a Democratic governor for the last 20+ years straight. The Governor and state legislators refuse to cut pork out of the budget to balance it without cutting critical services. Things like illegal aliens and ineligible people on the Oregon Health Plan (hillarycare-lite) will not be cut off. The Oregon Cultural Trust (a branch of government that buys art and pays artists to continue their work) won't get cut. The Oregon Economic Development Commission which has (allegedly) created some jobs at an (approximate) estimated $150,000 of taxpayer money per job won't be cut. The new program introduced by the last governor to go into the home of each parent of a first child to determine the "suitability" of the home for children will not be cut. Instead the Oregon governor and Rino and Democrat controlled legislature will cut funds for police, public education, roads, bridges, firefighters, defense, and other "critical" services. It's the same old tactic by the public employee's union controlled liberals that is used nationwide.

Our Arkansas budget has always been tight, so we don't have all the potential cuts to make. Most expenses are court or fed mandated, but there was some and the problem was that it was in the form of projects that were in powerful districts and employed locals for construction.

They could not touch them and rearranged all they could. In this state the governors hands are tied and he cannot help much so the end result is a mixture of cuts and sunset type tax hikes. also some fee increases and of-course the mandatory cigarette tax hike, (.25cents per pack) They could have done better and I believe they are still fighting over some of it.

BTW, 50% of the residents here are on some sort of assistance, maybe more.

Thanks for the ping.

Wasn't around much yesterday!

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"California requires a two-thirds majority to pass the budget and they therefore need a few Republican votes in both
houses to attain it."

Correction:California needs a two-thirds majority to pass a budget THAT RAISES TAXES and they need a few Republican votes to go along with their tax-hiking schemes.

Davis and Co. could pass a budget with Dem votes only, so long as they dont raise taxes to do it.

The media whining about the 1/3rd of the legislature that is not going along with left-loonie budget policies is simply amazing. Where is their reporting on Davis' fiscal bungling???

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