The Budget: All Kinds of Screwed Up

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Working Californians blogs]

The boxes were never blown up. Reform was not accomplished. The result is deja vu. It is like 2004/05 all over again. Schwarzenegger is proposing massive budget cuts, power grabs and talking like a partisan Republican again.

His true colors are showing again. They have been hiding for a few years.

Meanwhile, they are starting to tally the real world impact of the budget cuts the governor is proposing. It is staggering. LAT:

Facing the worst fiscal crisis of his tenure, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today proposed a $141-billion spending plan that would reduce health care programs for the poor, close 48 state parks or beaches, release tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates early and make substantial changes in almost every other area of the state's budget.

At the same time, he proposed expanding the state's debt load by more than $40 billion to finance more construction at public schools, colleges and other major institutions.

Schizophrenic no? Let's chop billions from classrooms so they can't buy more books or have enough teachers to teach, but let's borrow billions, driving up our future deficit issues to build new classrooms. Take from one hand and give it to the other. The construction companies get a little too.

Schwarzenegger proposed reducing education spending by $4.4 billion, $400 million of which would be trimmed from money schools had been promised this year. The reductions target special education classes, child nutrition programs, class-size reduction efforts, transportation and charter schools. Schools would receive 9% less next year than they would otherwise be entitled to under the constitutional guarantee for education funding, which the governor proposed suspending.

They are talking about cutting the minimum guaranteed money schools receive under Prop. 98. This will be vigorously opposed by the teachers. Meanwhile those in the Capitol are getting really cynical. Sounds to me like they are actually trusting Arnold to come to reality. I wouldn't take that bet.

Some in the Capitol are already dismissing the proposed deep cuts as a ruse -- an attempt to stir up so much public demand for a tax hike that the governor ultimately will be able to break his pledge not to take that route. The governor disputed any such idea, saying: "I will not go back and ask [voters] for any tax increases. They deserve better than that."

They do deserve better than this short sided plan to slash the budget. What they deserve is comprehensive reform. What they deserve is not the stop-gap measures they have gotten in previous years. What they deserve is a governor who has the political courage to invest his political capitol in getting that done.