Donor State Plan Needs Backup
Plan A to help reduce the projected $20-plus billion state budget deficit appears to be asking the Feds to send tax money that comes from California taxpayers back to the state. It is a justifiable request but there better be a Plan B.
Leaks prior to the release of the state budget indicate a big piece of the budget fix will be a request for the Feds to waive rules requiring matching state funds to acquire federal dollars for certain programs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will argue that California is a donor state, meaning the Golden State continually sends more money to Washington in tax revenue than it receives back in federal program grants. Now is the time to balance that inequity, the governor will argue, and at the same time help balance the state’s books.
Reports claim California receives only 78-cents for every dollar that the state’s taxpayers send off to Washington. California has been a donor state for quite some time. One website indicates that over the past two decades California ranked as the number one donor state in the nation.
Fixing California’s Broken Welfare System
California’s welfare system, known as CalWORKs, is in crisis. You might not hear much about it in the newspaper or on television, but this problem costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Instead of serving as a temporary assistance and retraining program that leads its recipients to new work and financial self-sufficiency, CalWORKs has itself become a way of life for many.
California has about 12 percent of the nation’s population. Under a rational system, we’d expect the state to have about 12 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients. But the reality is far worse—our state has about 30 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients. In comparison, Texas has 8 percent of the nation’s population, but just 3 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients.
How did we let it get this bad?
In 1996, Congress took much-needed action to reform the federal welfare program. The reforms tore down the old federal entitlement program and empowered states to implement genuine welfare-to-work programs. Caseloads across the country, including California’s, began to decline.
Jobless Republicans look to Congressional Race
There’s no such thing as an ex-politician, as the approaching contest for a Central Valley congressional seat proves.
When GOP Rep. George Radanovich announced last month that he would be leaving Congress after eight terms to spend more time with his ailing wife, he endorsed state Sen. Jeff Denham of Atwater as his chosen successor.
“Jeff and I share over 100,000 constituents and I have witnessed firsthand the work he has done for our special part of California,” Radanovich said in a statement. “Given his proven record as a candidate and elected official, I will do everything in my power to help him win in June and November of next year.”
Not so fast. Dick Pombo, who lost his Tracy-area congressional seat to Democrat Jerry McNerney in 2006, is heading south for a comeback.
Stopping State Raids of Local Government Funds Essential to Reforming California
Everyone agrees California’s system of governance is broken. To reform it, we need to take power away from our ineffective state government and move it to the local level where there’s more accountability for local voters and taxpayers. A key first step in this process is stopping the ongoing State raids of local taxpayer funds.
Toward that end, a broad coalition of local elected leaders, business leaders, public safety officials, taxpayer advocates and others just began collecting signatures to qualify the “Local Taxpayer, Public Safety and Transportation Protection Act of 2010” for the November 2010 ballot. This measure will prevent the State from borrowing, raiding or otherwise redirecting local government funds. It also protects existing gas taxes we pay at the pump which go to transportation improvements.