Facing a budget deficit of more than $20 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for deep reductions in already suffering local mass transit programs, renew his push to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast and appeal to Washington for billions of dollars in federal help, according to state officials and lobbyists familiar with the plan.
If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back — if not eliminate — CalWORKS, the state’s main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.
Schwarzenegger also will propose extending a cut in the state payroll that is scheduled to expire this summer. That cut has translated into 200,000 state workers being furloughed three days a month, the equivalent of a 14% pay cut. Lawmakers would have the option of extending the furloughs, imposing layoffs or some combination of the two.
Years and years of corruption,waste,featherbedding, and cut-throat Liberal Los Angeles based politics have come home to roost. It is not America’s problem and enabling this modis operandi will not solve anything…and I am a native son of a native son of California so I know of where I speak.
Intercessor
Well said, Intercessor. The root of the problem is that the politicians at Sacramento put politics above the welfare of the state. They would rather watch the state grind to a poverty-stricken halt than work cooperatively across party lines to build a practical solution. Democrats and Republicans in the legislature are equally to blame.
I pray that he doesn’t get the aid….It’s time for Californians to stand on their own two feet….no more hand outs!
While I don’t disagree with any of the above, we must remember that (as I understand it) populous states such as CA send proportionally more money to the Federal Government than they receive from it when compared with sparsely populated states such as mine.
#4: Federal taxes are for federal purposes, no?
(What, a taxi? for me?)
The consequence of government through the ballot. Californians, like everyone else, want huge prisons, but low taxes. First rate schools, but they don’t want to pay for them.
It’s nice to have low taxes, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
#6: No, John, it’s the high salaries & pension benefits for state employees in CA – you can do very nicely as a firefighter there. And the taxes aren’t low. That’s why 3,500 people are leaving each week.
Victor Davis Hanson is always going on about this.
Mr. Wilkins,
There are no first rate schools in California…but Nancy Pelosi who lives and resides in San Fransisco has three personal planes that we tax payers are paying for….hows that for a carbon footprint?
There’s a reductionist point of view. The problem in CA is that the taxpayers don’t want to pay more in taxes? If it were only so simple. Maybe, just maybe, the taxpayers don’t want anymore to go to the non-taxpayers and then they could have the huge prisons and schools that they really want. The CA, IL, & NY governmental models don’t work they are among the most bankrupt state governments in the US. Suggest moving to a State that is fiscally responsible.
CA, IL, NY government – the inspiration for Obamanation.
I just heard this morning that Fresno Mayor Swearengin along with all the major city mayors in Ca are looking to get in on $billions of Federal money for schools…..This just frys me. I agree with azusa #10
We all want government benefits without the taxes to pay for them. Hence Social Security, the biggest dole of all time. And i’m baffled by the constant refrain that govt pensions are breaking California. As a 20+ year, city employee, i know that most of my pension has been funded by money taken from my salary and for most of that time my employer has paid very little into my pension because of gains in the “market.” I estimate that 18% of my salary is taken each week to fund my retirement. If each American put away 18% of his/her salary, they too would have a “lavish” pension. In fact, there is just a chance that i can continue to live in this very expensive area after retirement, but only a chance. There are many apps available that compare cost of living. Try this with your salary in some of California’s more expensive cities and see how you fair before declaring us government employees overpaid. It’s definately true that California’s govenment model is utterly disfunctional especially with it’s “proposition model” of voting on every cause of the moment. But we have the government we deserve. We are the ones that keep voting for actors for governor.
The problem, my friends, in CA (and probably NY and IL) is that the boss (that is, the economy) was in a habit of giving the states a raise each year, and the states went ahead and spent the raise before they received it. However, the boss (that is, the economy) decided to give them a pay cut instead of a raise. And oh, by the way–the contingency fund? They spent that ahead of time too.
There are many families in the U.S. that are in the same condition–especially the ones that got delayed-reaction mortgages. If we were all that irresponsible, the lines at the soup kitchens would be very long, and the soup would be getting very thin.
Well Br_er Rabbit the soup lines in Ca are getting longer and the soup thinner now that farmers have no water for their crops and farm laborers are out of work and the unemployment rate as of Oct was 12.3% and has risen. Crops that we used to grow here to feed not only us in CA but everyone else in the US is now being imported from China to give to those out of worker people in handout lines. Interesting that! ;>/
By the way….in regards to my #11 post of what the major city mayors are going after here in Calif this is it.
http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html
#14 TLDillon, you are correct, and even the migrant Mexican workers have gone home.
Br_er Rabbit ,
Not all of them….some of them are still here receiving Welfare because they have had children here in the U.S. so they qualifier.
TLD, I would not describe a person who brought his wife and whose children were born in the United States as a “migrant worker.” I was referring to that large contingent of Mexican workers, both legal and illegal, whose primary concern is to earn money to send back to their families in Mexico.
And what makes you think that those who came over here and had children aren’t doing the same thing? I know quite a few that are. Christmas break for our schools was extended for a week because those families go back to Mexico and don’t come back until well after the 7th of Jan each year. So the State was losing money from those migrant workers children not being in school so Calif. decided to extend Christmas break a week extra. Those who came over here as married couples worked together in the fields as well and they too send money back to Mexico and then when they have a child while over here they know that they then can qualify for Welfare and a whole bunch of other give away programs such as Head Start for their kids when they become preschool age and a host of other things that California has available for them that we taxpaying citizens pay for. My son’s mother-in-law works with these very people and I was shocked at what they get that others don’t get. California is not a good model for schools, or big government run state….and don’t even get me started on Low Income Housing developments……growing at an alarming rate here in Calif.
Wait Wait… Let me get this straight: [blockquote] So the State was losing money from those migrant workers children not being in school so Calif. decided to extend Christmas break a week extra. [/blockquote] How does the State lose money from children not being in school? I know that the school districts lose money that they would otherwise have received from the State when attendance drops, but in that case the State is saving money, not losing it. And are you sure that extending Christmas break an extra week is not just another ploy to reduce the amount of services that the State has to pay for?
The newer Mexican families I know are among the hardest working people in the labor force, working for some of the lowest wages. The second and third generation of these immigrants (as opposed to migrant workers who move back and forth) are indistinguishable from any other group of immigrants in America’s history–unless, of course, an Hispanic culture is somehow less valuable than a European culture.
I never said they weren’t hard working… that has nothing to do with the FREE benefits they get. There are a lot of hard working people and many who are not Hispanic or of another culture from another country that now find themselves out of work as well….Detroit MI, for example, and I just wonder if they would qualify for these same FREE programs? They too, were and are, hard working people who by the way paid & pay their taxes ….and yes the schools districts (thank you for correcting me on that one) were losing money because they get a percentage back for every migrant workers children that are enrolled in school and in class ….they, kind of like FEMA when they give money for Soup Kitchens, have to turn in an attendance sheet and then they get funded by that attendance sheet. …..and unless you live in California in the heart of agriculture I don’t expect you to get it. Because I do not know of any other state that does this …I am not saying that there may not be another state that does, I just don’t know of any because I have only lived in California my whole 50 years of life. By the way many schools in California, especially in the agriculture areas and close to the Mexico border, are 90% Hispanic so yes if those kids are not in school they lose money!
Thanks for straightening me out, TL. I believe that Arizona and Texas work somewhat like California, and a few inland states also.
I only lived in California for 57 years, subtracting the sojourns to Arizona, Missouri, Mississippi, and now Pennsylvania. I’m itching to go back (I just salted the sidewalk; it was eleven degrees last night). But I might end up in Nevada; I just bought a 2008 car and they really penalize you in California if you buy a car out of state.
I was living in Los Angeles County when the hispanics took political power in the city and county. They are taking the state back after all those gringos came over the border illegally and set up their own California Republic. In L.A., I think they’re doing a better job than the previous political machine.