The California Budget Crisis and Words: Don't Like "Tax Increase"? Okay - Call It a "Budget Surge"

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network

Policymakers often like to use words that make the world - as they hope we'll see it - better.

That is human nature and to some extent we all do that to mask or somehow hide unpleasant or bad news (like responding to a friend in need of exercise who asks how their brand new spandex exercise shorts look on them, though I suppose it depends on the friend).

It's like the proverbial story of a parent telling a child that the old family dog was taken to a farm out in the country so he can roam free and live (rather than being told unfortunately that he was "put down" or less delicately, put in a cardboard box and "killed" at the local vet's office. Either way, its hard to make that sound good).

One believes masking the truth of course, makes it easier on the child, though it is also done to make it easier on the person who is giving the news so that it doesn't sound so bad.

Likewise, use of different words can create an artificial reality that allow policymakers during a budget crisis to speak of unpleasant proposals, bad and even horrific ideas that one would normally dare not speak in public (never mind in church).

Yet, somehow by using other more pleasant sounding words to describe something really bad, it makes it easier to say and easier to hear.
Hell, you could even talk about cutting services to the lowest income seniors on a Sunday in church and make it sound like a good thing if one used the right words (of course, like that image of a dog running free on the farm, it doesn't change what would actually happens, but it makes everyone else feel much better about things).

Unpleasant News and "Budget Speak"

And there is a lot of unpleasant news in California, with a budget deficit still at enormous $8 to $9 billion and possibly growing with proposed devastating cuts looming that impact a wide array of critical services and supports for children and adults with disabilities, mental health needs, seniors, low income families and others. Many cuts - to Medi-Cal, regional centers and other areas - have already happened. And more bad news and cuts are on the way.

In "budget speak" here in Sacramento, unpleasant or bad news to our communities are masked with other words to describe proposals that cut services or reduce spending. Words like "pressures on the General Fund," "cost savings," "cost containment," "cost avoidance," "controlling costs", suspending cost of living," and "delaying pass through of the SSI COLA" to name a few.