Solving California’s Budget Crisis While Protecting Taxpayers
With our national economy experiencing a meltdown, families are having a tough time keeping their heads above water financially and many businesses have been forced to close or downsize.
All of this has contributed to a doomsday budget scenario for California. In the short time since lawmakers and the Governor reached agreement on the bipartisan budget compromise in mid-September, the budget shortfall has grown by roughly $3 billion.
Lawmakers and the Governor have been working together in recent weeks to consider what steps we should take to address our growing budget problems. The Governor may soon convene a special session of the Legislature to take action.
In light of California’s budget challenges, Assembly Republicans will be fighting hard to protect working families from higher taxes and higher spending, while demanding that we pass the necessary reforms to fix our broken system and prevent future deficits.
Playing by Mob Rules
When this country’s top bankers went into a secret meeting last week, they may have believed that they were to meet Henry Paulson and hear an update on the unfolding financial crisis. Instead, the Henry Paulson they met was no longer just Treasury secretary but the new Don of the financial universe, and he was going to make them a deal they couldn’t refuse.
Yes, Don Paulson told them, the government had a deal for them. The government was going to buy a big stake in their banks and be their new partner, whether they liked it or not. Now, of course, the bankers had two choices: They could take the deal, or they could take the deal.
Actually, I made up the part about what Paulson said to them. We don’t know what he said. Apparently not so much as a transcript was made.
Bankruptcy Bonds
In 2003, we kicked Governor Gray Davis out of office for fiscal
irresponsibility, holding him personally responsible for running up a
$15 billion budget deficit.
In 2004, at the urging of the now-invisible Governor Schwarzenegger,
we approved Prop 57, the 15-billion-dollar Economic Recovery Bond
Act, because we believed the promise that it would be the last of the
state budget’s red ink.
This year, while “working on” the budget in a time of extraordinary
economic crisis, our Sacramento Democrats replied with a single,
uncompromising, unthinking answer in a shrill lemming/sheep hybrid of
a voice – “No program cuts!” Republicans, matching them for mindless
lockstep politics, screamed back, “No new taxes!”