GOP Advances Sensible Budget

John Seiler:

Yes, it can be done. California’s bloated, out-of-control, jobs-killing state budget can be balanced without increasing taxes.

The budget proposal Republican legislators just put forward sure isn’t perfect. And maybe its assumptions — such as continued increases in tax receipts — are too rosy. But the numbers are a start in the right direction. Without tax increases.

The Bee reported: “The proposal from Assembly Republicans relies on an upswing in revenues, big cuts to state employees, social and health services, and privatizing some state jobs…”

Predictably, Democrats attacked the proposal. They’re still stuck on their tax-increase obsession.

Gil Duran, spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, said:

This is not a budget proposal, this is a budget press release … [with] the usual smoke-and-mirrors, head-in-the-sand approach, with a short-term fix that will do nothing to get us out of the mess we’re in.

Actually, it’s Brown’s tax fixation that “will do nothing to get us out of the mess we’re in” — and indeed will dig a deeper hole with jobs-killing tax increases.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer charged:

The folks who offer this plan pretend our longer-term budget gaps don’t exist. Or maybe they think Tinkerbell will fly in and make the shortfalls vanish with pixie dust.

Actually, his tax addiction would widen “our longer-term budget gaps” by killing jobs and down-sizing the state tax base.

The questions now are: Will Republicans stick to their guns? Will they continue to defend the businesses and the working men and women of this state against the depredations of the pampered, elite, government-worker class?

May 13, 2011