California Fiscal State of Emergency
As predicted a few weeks ago California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) declared a “State of Fiscal Emergency” in Tuesday night’s State of the State speech. As expected the Governor said the Golden State either has to raise much more money or cut someplace. He is already shilling for an Indian gaming deal that allows select tribes with thousands more slot machines in exchange for a pittance of their profits albeit $9 billion over ten years. He also called on bureaucrats to cut pending 10% to close a $14 billion hole in the state’s budget. Schwarzenegger blamed the state’s formulaic budgeting system for an estimated $14 billion shortfall and told Californians his “difficult” spending plan will have across-the-board cuts but no tax increases. Revenues are flat, automatic formulas are increasing spending by 7.3 percent,” Schwarzenegger said. Again he proposed a constitutional amendment that would require voter approval to change the state’s budgeting system. He said he tried and failed to convince the Legislature in 2004 to approve a spending cap proposal. He also reminds voters that they rejected his proposal during the 2005 special election to do that. Schwarzenegger’s “post-partisan” strategy for two years has relied on support from majority Democrats with his personal brand of Republican beliefs, locking out “fellow” GOP members in the Capitol Assembly. He is now reaching out to his fellow Republicans and shifting his political strategy rightward as he faces a stupendously large $14 billion shortfall. Speaker Fabian Núñez (D) warned Tuesday that “cuts alone won’t fix things…The conversation can’t just be about price, it has to be about priorities, too,” Núñez says. That suggest more taxes in the face of what is increasingly looking like a deep, prolonged recession.If Proposition 93 – the deceptively named “Limits on Legislative terms…” fails on February 5th there will be many new players for Schwarzenegger’s final year, If not it will be virtually the same cast of characters that reverse engineered the enormous budget deficit even recalled Governor and fiscal wizard Gray Davis couldn’t even come close to.
Opponents of California’s Proposition 93 that would extend the terms of five dozen
California legislative incumbents have launched two advertisements, while proponents began airing one ad and both will run through Feb.4, according to public records. Polling says it is very close – you can tell who is ahead by which of the camps change their ad(s) first.
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Pingback by Arnold Schwarzenegger » Blog Archive » California Fiscal State of Emergency on 10 January 2008:
[...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Hypocrisy.com [...]
Comment by Management on 16 January 2008:
Did Arnold comment on this? What’s with these trackbacks, are they for real or someone’s idea of a joke?