Free Republic

Social Security and Medicare are on an “unsustainable course” and will run out of funds by 2037. That’s the conclusion reached by the General Accountability Office (GAO) and the Social Security Administration.There is no saving these programs without massive changes. And demagoguing the issue, as Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing, only delays the day of reckoning. To pretend these programs don’t need intervention now — right now — is to play with dynamite. The sooner we can get started, the less pain will be inflicted on senior citizens.Pain there will be. In order to put these programs on...

Partial transcript: “So this time we have a worse financial crisis than last time and nobody gets a bailout, nobody gets a government check there is no TARP there is nothing and what does that mean that means the US government instead of sending stimulus checks to Americans who were struggling, who are unemployed the US government is actually going to send Americans a bill because the government is going to be forced to raise taxes on the people who still have jobs because that's the only way it can pay its bills but you know what else they're going...

Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed the budget package passed Wednesday by Democratic legislators, sources say, which creates a potential rift within his own party. The sources said an announcement was expected soon. [Updated at 10:42 a.m., June 16: Brown announced the veto in a press release Thursday. "Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not a balanced solution," his statement said. "It continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars of new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to...

Californians object to increasing taxes in order to pare the state's massive budget deficit, and instead favor closing the breach through spending cuts. But they oppose cuts—and even prefer more spending—on programs that make up 85% of the state's general fund obligations, a new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll has found. That paradox rests on Californians' firm belief that the state's deficit—estimated last week at nearly $25 billion over the next 18 months—can be squared through trimming waste and inefficiencies rather than cutting the programs they hold dear. Despite tens of billions that have been cut from the state budget in...

A legislative budget committee voted unanimously Wednesday to eliminate state agencies altogether, taking dead aim at an administrative layer of gubernatorial bureaucracy that oversees most of the state's departments. The 10-member panel -- six Democrats and four Republicans -- also voted to eliminate the Office of the Secretary of Education, which lawmakers said is unnecessary because the state already has an elected Superintendent of Public Instruction and a State Board of Education. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recommended last month that lawmakers consolidate more than a dozen boards and commissions to save $50 million. Schwarzenegger also began laying off 5,000 rank-and-file state...

SACRAMENTO — For the third time in as many weeks Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is slashing state programs by billions of dollars to wipe out a deficit that seems to be growing by the day. The cuts would eliminate in-home nursing for all but the neediest patients, such as those who can't breathe or walk on their own. The proposal would grab $550 million from counties that's currently used to provide social services for the poor. And it would cut funding for schools and community colleges by an additional $680 million, bringing the total education cuts Schwarzenegger has suggested to...

WASHINGTON -- Saying California voters delivered a message to "go all out" in cutting government spending, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today promised to make severe state budget reductions in education, health care and law enforcement. "We tried to not make those kind of cuts, but now we have to," the Republican governor told reporters in Washington. "There's no other choice. I think the message was clear from the people: Go all out and make those cuts and live within your means." Schwarzenegger thanked Californians for voting in Tuesday's special election. They rejected ballot measures endorsed by the governor that would have...

Thursday, May 14, 2009 Californians will vote next Tuesday on a series of budget-related propositions, and one thing is clear from new Rasmussen Reports telephone polling in the state: Voters aren’t in the mood for tax increases to ease California’s budget woes. Seventy-three percent (73%) of California voters oppose raising state income taxes to eliminate the budget deficit. Raising the state sales tax is opposed by 69%. At the same time, 69% favor major cuts in government spending to eliminate the budget deficit. Just 16% oppose the spending cuts. There is strong support for one concept that will be on...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently attacks legislators as spending addicts. He won his office largely by criticizing former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis for leading the state into the fiscal basement. And he is pushing Proposition 76, which includes restrictions that he says are necessary to rein in government spending. But the Republican governor also has found that slicing and dicing government spending in California is no easy task. Each of his first two budgets increased the size of state government, the more recent one boosting spending from the state's main bank account by nearly 13 percent. In the $117.3 billion budget...