Why Not Use Last Year’s Budget?
Is California sliding into the Pacific Ocean? Are there riots in the streets? Are Californians starving to death?
None of the above.
Then the solution to the state budget problem is simple: Just rinse and repeat the fiscal 2011-12 state budget, which ends June 30, for the following year’s budget, fiscal 2012-13, which begins July 1.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal increases spending $6 billion, while imposing $7 billion in new taxes to pay for it. The Legislative Analyst says the real tax intake would be $4.8 billion.
Either way, why not just cancel the higher spending and the higher taxes Brown wants to pay for it? Just keep on chooglin’ with with the current budget.
Of course, then Brown couldn’t shift into Gov. Moonbeam Mode and push his “bold moves,” as Katy Grimes reported, on High-Speed Rail, alternative energy and water. He’d just be an accountant who could take a vacation.
But that’s what the state needs. We’ve had “bold moves” from too many governors who now are in retirement after they left the state broke.
The toll is seen in a state debt that, as tallied by Dan Walters. The debt now totals something like $1 trillion. He wrote, “Brown’s budget pegs the state’s pension debt at $45.2 billion and retiree health care at $59.9 billion, but independent estimates of the pension gap have ranged as high as a half-trillion dollars, depending on assumption of future investment earnings. In all, state and local governments may be a trillion dollars in debt, equal to half of California’s annual economic output.”
And here’s a final point: What if Silicon Valley, whose billionaires pay so much of the state tax bill, finally get sick of Taxifornia, and decamp for Reno — with no state income tax — keeping only their vacation beach houses in California?
Jan. 10, 2012
Related Articles
Prop 19 may go up in smoke
Katy Grimes: A new poll just released shows that Proposition 19 may be just a pothead’s pipe dream, and could
Trash train fiasco illustrates private vs. public double standard
This story in the Orange County Register illustrates a common CalWatchdog theme: In the private sector, incompetence leads to companies
Elmer Fudd Translates Jerry’s Speech
John Seiler: To help us better understand, here’s Elmer Fudd translating Gov. Jerry Brown’s State of the State speech for