Can the feds bailout California?
Speaker Bass has taken the position that the Legislature has already made $10 to $12 billion in cuts over the past several years, and enough is enough. Therefore, her preference in addressing the budget deficit is "I want to do 50 percent revenue and 50 percent from the federal government." This is an understandable position from a Democratic Speaker, but is it practical? After all, with a twenty-month budget deficit pegged by the Legislative Analyst at $27.8 billion, could we expect Washington to deliver $13 billion or so next year just to California?
Life Imitating Art
Does anybody remember the 1993 movie "Dave"? It was a nice little movie starring Kevin Kline about a philandering President who has a stroke and goes into a coma while he is "in flagrante delicato" with a mistress. (Gee, I wonder who the model was for that character.)
Dave runs a small Washington D.C. employment agency where he helps those who need a job, sometimes even giving them money from his own pocket to help them get by. He bears a striking resemblance to the comatose President, and he is enlisted to "fill-in" for the President at the behest of a deviously evil White House Chief of Staff and Press Secretary.
Dave begins to take the job seriously, and when he tries to fund a homeless program that the Chief of Staff wants cut, he decides to call his nerdy accountant Murray, played by Charles Grodin, to come to the White House and help him look for savings in the Federal Budget so he can restore the funding.
The following is an exchange is between Dave and Murray. After the script excerpt I will tell you what this all has to do with the current mess in Washington and closer to home in Sacramento.
Lock ‘em in a Room
Little progress seems to be made on the state’s budget fiasco during the special session called by the governor. Now we have a new report from Beacon Economics, commissioned by California Forward, that fiscal matters are worse than we thought. The report says we are at the edge of a "fiscal cliff."
And, during this dire crisis where are some of our elected representatives? Wandering on "fact-finding" trips all over the globe.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported about two dozen lawmakers are traveling to places like India, China, and Hawaii. You can find a list of the wandering members in the Chronicle article.