California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will seek “terrible cuts” to eliminate an $18.6 billion budget deficit facing the most-populous U.S. state through June 2011, his spokesman said.Welcome to reality. California has been a social welfare state for years, and back when times were good there was enough money to go around. Those days are over. The left will go bananas over any social program cuts and will demand tax hikes "for the children", but all tax hikes would do is finish off the state completely.
Schwarzenegger, 62, who will introduce his revised budget plans on May 14, has said he won’t seek tax increases to bolster California’s finances. The Republican’s forecast for the budget gap may rise after revenue fell short of his targets last month.
“We can’t get through this deficit without very terrible cuts,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear told reporters in Sacramento. “We don’t believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do.”
California’s revenue in April, when income-tax payments are due, trailed the governor’s estimates by $3.6 billion, or 26 percent. The gap wiped out gains from the previous four months, leaving collections $1.3 billion behind projections for the budget year that ends in June.
Schwarzenegger’s newest plan will revise the proposals introduced in January to account for the tax-collection shortages. In January, the governor said California may have to eliminate entire welfare programs, including the main one that provides cash and job assistance to families below the poverty line, without an influx of cash from the federal government.
Since then, the Democrat-controlled Legislature has made few strides toward closing the budget hole. Legislation adopted during the emergency session ordered by Schwarzenegger knocked about $1.4 billion from the deficit.
A reader sent me this George Will quote, and it's very true:
“The climate of Los Angeles is usually Mediterranean and the fiscal climate is now Greek.”
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