A Compromise Budget likely means Deep Spending Cuts to Health Care
In any state budget impasse, attention inevitably focuses on the areas of conflict, and the public’s focus will soon turn to the reluctance of most Republican lawmakers to vote for a plan that would ask voters to extend temporary taxes for another five years.
But even as the debate over revenues begins in earnest, we shouldn’t lose sight of the deep spending cuts that are part of the plan moving toward both floors of the Legislature this week.
The cuts in the health care safety net, in particular, will make it more difficult for the neediest among us, including children and the elderly, to obtain the care they need to stay healthy or to get well once they are sick.
The cuts reduce payments by 10 percent to doctors, hospitals and nursing homes that care for the poor. California already has among the lowest reimbursement rates in the country, paying, on average, less than half what doctors get under the Medicare program.
Budging on the Budget
Cross-posted at Zev.LACounty.Gov.
We spoke—and the governor listened.
Gov. Brown’s office announced that he’d scaled back one of the most onerous facets of his “realignment” plan to erase the state’s $26 billion deficit. Responding to concerns and criticisms of county leaders and law enforcement officials across the state, Brown significantly shrank the numbers of state prisoners and parolees he’d planned on putting under the management of California’s counties.
And that’s good news for a couple reasons.
First, our local criminal system already is bursting at the seams. Our jails are overcrowded and we simply don’t have the kind of staffing—or the money—needed to supervise the huge numbers of parolees with which the governor wanted to saddle us. The Board of Supervisors, Sheriff Lee Baca and District Atty. Steve Cooley had made this abundantly clear to Sacramento.
LA Times Exposé Will Test Community College Election
The Los Angeles Times completed an exhaustive six-part
series yesterday on the Los Angeles Community College system, which charged
that out of billions in bond money "tens of millions of dollars have gone to
waste because of poor planning, frivolous spending and shoddy workmanship." Ironically,
some members of the community college board of trustees are running for
re-election in Tuesday’s election.
While little attention is spent on races such as the
community college board, the Times articles should open the eyes of the
property taxpayers who back the bonds and pay for the waste mentioned in the
article.
Board of trustee candidates for re-election are filling
mailboxes with campaign literature, one even boldly claiming that he "fights to
protect taxpayers."
High Speed Rail: The Dream Scheme Scenario
Cross-posted at NewGeography.
Ever since Jay Gould, Leland Stanford, and Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired their first legislatures, railroads have been best understood as political networks, rather than as transportation lines. The Obama administration is hyping high-speed rail (HSR) with a $53 billion proposal not because the president is a trainspotter or because he collects back copies of the Official Guide of the Railways (like I do). Rather, it’s because politicians understand that the states blew their money on generous pension plans, pretentious sports stadiums, and bridges to nowhere, and now need billions to plug their budget deficits. It’s easier to funnel money into tapped–out state capitals under the smoke and mirrors of a feel-good rail project than it is to announce that the federal government stands behind states’ subprime debts. The Government Accounting Office estimates unfunded state liabilities at $405 billion, which is probably what HSR would, in the end, cost. Think of it as the Stimulus Express.
The high-speed scheme is a dream of superfast trains, traveling at 150 m.p.h., linking Portland, Maine, and Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago with St. Louis and Kansas City; the Orlando corridor in Florida (which the governor there has rejected); and express trains in Texas and California. Another way to look at the proposed HSR network is to imagine it connecting the cities and states that Obama needs to carry if he is to have a chance of winning the 2012 election.