Brown Vetoes Budget!

Katy Grimes: In a youtube video this morning, Gov. Jerry Brown said he had vetoed the two budget bills, which were passed only yesterday by the Democrat-controlled Legislature using a majority vote, because he said the cuts made did not go deep enough.

“In January I presented a balanced budget,” said Brown. “But Republicans said ‘no.’ Democrats made some very deep cuts, but they don’t go far enough,” Brown said.

“California is facing a fiscal crisis and very strong medicine must be taken,” said Brown. He said that he vetoed the plan “because I don’t want to see more billions of borrowing, legal maneuvers that are questionable and a budget that will not stand the test of time.”

That happened fast.

But legislators will still receive their pay, even though they produced a budget that wasn’t worthy of a 24-hour lifespan.

Democrats will cut even deeper into the programs in which voters will feel the most pain, and into the services which are the most visible – schools, health and human service programs, police and fire, garbage pickup, parks – in order to bring voters to their knees and approve tax increases.

This is diabolical.

Yesterday Democratic Sen. Juan Vargas (San Diego) accused Republicans of not listening to the people, and said “After the next election, Republicans will be punished again – they don’t listen to the people.”

Yet in each of the seven previous elections, voters have rejected tax increases.

Who is not listening?

This is just more proof that special interest, trial lawyers and public employee unions are running the show in California – not Jerry. Brown and the Democrat legislators are just the facilitators which unions put in place to legally do their bidding.

UPDATE: 11:55 a.m.

Democratic Assembly Speaker John Perez and Sen. Pres Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg just held a press conference and said that they stand by and are proud of the budget they passed.

Critical of Brown’s veto, both Steinberg and Perez said that Brown wasn’t able to deliver the Republican votes needed for his budget proposal, so they “did the most responsible thing” and passed the budget with a majority vote.

Both expressed their “dismay” with the governor, and said that Brown was “getting caught up and was frankly getting confused by total victory and progress.” Steinberg said they “made a two-thirds dent in the budget,” and planned to do more to finish the work.

The buzz amongst the press corp is that Brown’s veto decision will most likely boost his approval rating amongst voters. And, the press conference ended abruptly as soon as reporters started asking about legislative pay.

The two legislative leaders appeared defensive over their leadership roles during the budget process. While they were critical of Brown for not delivering Republican votes for his budget plan, neither did they.

(watch the conference: on The California Channel)

JUNE 16, 2011