Thread: Schwarzenegger to propose 'ugly cuts' for Calif.

Schwarzenegger to propose 'ugly cuts' for Calif.

By JUDY LIN, Associated Press,
Sunday, December 5, 2010 at 9:01 a.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Californians can expect a relatively simple but painful solution when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils his plan Monday for closing a $6 billion deficit as he makes one final attempt to balance the state budget before leaving office: spending cuts.

That will be different than when he signed a budget in October after the longest impasse in state history, a plan that was criticized even before Schwarzenegger signed it for being unrealistic and out of balance.

"You can expect ugly cuts," Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said. "There's not a whole lot of ways you can go about it at this point. We have a set amount of money, less than we thought we were going to have, so we can't spend the money we don't have."

Don't expect Democratic lawmakers who control both houses of the Legislature to simply go along with whatever austerity program the outgoing Republican governor proposes. Throughout the year, they have rejected his most drastic proposals, including the elimination of CalWORKS, which provides cash and work assistance to more than 300,000 adults and more than 1 million children from needy families.

Democratic leaders have written a letter in support of a lawsuit filed by advocates to undo Schwarzenegger's veto of $133 million in mental health services for special needs students. They also said they would like to restore child care subsidies for former welfare parents that the governor cut, saving $256 million.

"We will be open and look at what Governor Schwarzenegger proposes, but I'm going to be looking to see whether or not the approach he suggests is comprehensive," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

Rather than simply tackling the current-year deficit, Steinberg said he would like lawmakers to take a multiyear approach.

Republicans caution against delaying difficult decisions as California's budget deficit is expected to grow to $25.4 billion through June 2012. They urged Democratic leaders to make cuts, whether or not they accept the governor's proposals.

"This problem is worse today than it was because of the procrastination and the tendency to want to delay making the tough decisions. You might call it a failure to lead and to govern," said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga.

Schwarzenegger is expected to release a package of bills to address the fiscal crisis when lawmakers are called into special session Monday, when new lawmakers are sworn into office. It would be Schwarzenegger's 18th special session since taking office in 2003 - more than any governor in the state's history.

Much of the $86.6 billion budget for the coming fiscal year that Schwarzenegger signed Oct. 8 was filled with overly optimistic revenue assumptions, cost shifts and about $3.5 billion in federal funding that the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office predicted would not materialize.

Schwarzenegger noted that the Republican takeover of Congress will make it even harder to secure federal aid.

Voters also have put restraints on the steps lawmakers can take.

Last month, they approved Proposition 22, which prohibits the state from borrowing money from local governments. That is forecast to leave an $800 million hole next year.

Voters also made it harder for lawmakers to increase fees. As with taxes, fee hikes will require a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, a virtually impossible threshold because Republicans have said they will not approve new taxes or fees.

Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that advocates for lower- and middle-income families, said the incoming governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, and the Legislature face an "incredibly tough budget year."

While the state does not face a cash shortage, the economy remains weak, temporary increases in some state taxes are set to expire, federal stimulus money is running out and Congress, led by a newly elected Republican majority in the House, is in no mood to offer any more aid to states.

"What may happen is that the cuts proposed by the governor in January and May, we'll see again," Ross said.

After accepting a series of cutbacks to public schools and social services amid the national recession, Democrats are looking forward to working with fellow Democrat Brown, even if the economy remains shaky and the revenue outlook dim.

Brown announced that he will hold a series of meetings focused on different aspects of the budget as he tries to build broad agreement on the scope of the problem. The first such meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Sacramento.

Democrats were given one boost by voters last month with passage of a ballot initiative lowering the legislative voting threshold to pass a budget from two-thirds to simple majority, meaning they can do so without Republican support.

The high threshold was often blamed for long budget delays that encouraged Republicans and some Democrats to withhold their votes until they were able to extract concessions, often on issues that had nothing to do with the budget.

How much that will help is unclear, because Democrats cannot raise taxes or fees without some Republicans agreeing. Because the Legislature also is unable to borrow from local governments, top-to-bottom spending cuts are among their few options.

Democrats appear in no hurry to work with Schwarzenegger. Lawmakers have 45 days to act after the governor declares a fiscal emergency and calls a special session, and Schwarzenegger will be out by then.

"Once the governor announces his proposal, then we'll evaluate it," said Shannon Murphy, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles.

Brown will have to present his own spending plan for the 2011-12 fiscal year a week after being sworn in on Jan. 3. Republicans warn that the longer Democrats wait, the more difficult the decisions will become.

"We've been down this road so many times," said Assemblywoman Connie Conway, the new Republican Assembly leader from Tulare. "What I hear from constituents and voters is 'Times are tough. You need to fix this problem, and you need to fix it now.'"

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010 ... for-calif/

I sent the gov. an email that says:

"To balance the budget we must cut off all benefits to all illegal aliens.

They have feed at the trough for to long.

It must end now to save our state."


You can send him an email from his site

http://gov.ca.gov/interact#email

(Click the link above and fill out the email form.)
Probably best if you make it sound like you live, and vote, in CA.
Complaints from out of state probably don't mean as much to him.

It's totally outragoues that California and any other state spends 1 dime on illegal aliens or their offspring. Stop the nonsense, end the spending, get them out and keep them out. Then California would have an almost balanced budget without increasing taxes at all.

Judy,
I stole some of your comment and added a bit of my own to it. Here is my eMail to Arnie.

It's totally outragous that California and any other state spends 1 dime on illegal aliens or their offspring. Stop the nonsense, end the spending, get them out and keep them out. Then California would have an almost balanced budget without increasing taxes at all.
Last I heard they are costing the state THIRTEEN BILLION a year. Thats up from NINE
BILLION from about 5 years ago. Californians are fed up paying for those who do not belong here and putting precedence above those who do!

Originally Posted by Judy

It's totally outragoues that California and any other state spends 1 dime on illegal aliens or their offspring. Stop the nonsense, end the spending, get them out and keep them out. Then California would have an almost balanced budget without increasing taxes at all.

If the federal government had done thier job and secured the border after the Reagan Amesty in 1986, like they said they would, CA. and all other states wouldn't be dealing with this mess that the feds created.

RELATED

Brown to go public with California's dire budget news

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-220145.html

There really isn't much he can do before Brown takes over in less than a month,
but I don't have the email address for "Governor" Brown yet.

What about the 9-12 billion we spend on illegal invaders and their anchor spawn each year! Is that going to be eliminated? That would seem like the most logical place to start, before any cuts to American citizens are implemented. That’s half the deficit right there!

Schwarzenegger's wild ride ends quietly


The outgoing governor takes one more stab at the state's budget deficit, but Brown has already begun taking charge of fiscal policy.


By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times
December 5, 2010

Sometimes the page turns quietly, without the clang and confetti of a New Year's celebration. So it appeared last week, as the display of power visibly shifted in Sacramento a month ahead of Jerry Brown's formal assumption of the governorship from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Brown announced last week that he would hold a budget summit on Wednesday and invited the Legislature, state and local officials and other interested parties. Schwarzenegger offered a somewhat wistful soliloquy about what being governor has meant to him, in personal terms that inadvertently underscored how different his ending has been from his beginning.

Monday will reflect a painful symmetry. The outgoing governor is expected to declare a fiscal emergency and call the newly elected Legislature into a special session to deal with the intractable budget deficit. On his first day in office he did the same thing, issuing a proclamation for a special session to deal with the state's fiscal crisis. Governors change, but fiscal tumult endures.

----

Schwarzenegger came into office, of course, during the recall election of 2003, swamping a strange and eclectic field of first-time candidates and attention-seekers, his Hollywood tough-guy persona seen by voters as an antidote to a governor, Gray Davis, who they felt was flummoxed by the state's problems. In another mordant bit of symmetry, Schwarzenegger leaves office about as popular as Davis was when he was kicked to the curb.

Whether that reflects the failures of both men or the fickleness of the electorate or something in the middle, it is what it is: In a September Field Poll, only 23% of Californians approved of Schwarzenegger's handling of his job.

Schwarzenegger's popularity over the years has catapulted from high to low, as if he was in the first car of a rollercoaster ride shared by 38 million people. He started strong and went even higher, by mid-2004 favored by two-thirds of Californians after mounting partisan bond measures that he promised would allow the state to cut up its credit cards forever. He slumped to a favorable rating in the low 30s in the fall of 2005 as he pushed a series of ballot measures that voters repudiated.

He rebuilt his popularity the next year, in time for reelection, and built on that momentum for several months. But as 2007 ended, a new slump began, the foundering economy helping thrust him ever lower. In July 2010, he tied Davis' low point in the Field Poll — 22%, achieved weeks before the recall — and by September, as the race for his succession heightened, he had inched up an insignificant single point.

Those numbers represented the views of all Californians, the usual measuring stick for elected officials. The same undulating trajectory is evident when voters alone are considered, according to polls by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Of those who voted in November of 2005, in the disastrous ballot measure election, only 39% favored Schwarzenegger; by his reelection in 2006, that was up to 60%. In 2008, he had dropped to 42% job approval and last month he was down to 32%.

In a state where the Legislature is even less popular than the unpopular governor, it is tempting to think that Californians always deride their leaders, but that is not so. Apart from Davis, none of Schwarzenegger's predecessors dropped as low as he has.

Democrat Pat Brown and Republican Pete Wilson bottomed out in the mid-30s to Schwarzenegger's low 20s in the Field Poll. Ronald Reagan's lowest job approval was 46% and his Republican colleague George Deukmejian's lowest was a startling 53%. Even Jerry Brown, derided by the GOP this year as a failure in his first two terms, dropped only to 38% and at one point was popular with 69% of Californians.

----

Even if California's choice in the recall evinced a certain desperation, Schwarzenegger tried from the beginning to command for California the buoyant success that had characterized his prior careers in movies and bodybuilding.

"This election was not about replacing one man; it was not about replacing one party," he said in his first inaugural address in November 2003. "It was about changing the entire political climate of our state.... With the eyes of the world upon us, we did the dramatic. Now we must put the rancor of the past behind us and do the extraordinary."

"I want people to know that my administration is not about politics," he added later. "It is about saving California."

Now that saving California is about to land in someone else's lap, Schwarzenegger last week gave something of a closing statement at a Sacramento Press Club gala. He talked of the role's personal effect, calling it "the most fulfilling and the most gratifying and rewarding job that I ever could have imagined."

"The last seven years, of course, have certainly brought highs and lows, no two ways about it, a lot of highs and lows," he said. And as he had in the first inaugural, he referred to his immigrant's optimism.

"For an immigrant that has come over here with absolutely nothing and then to find yourself 42 years later in this position is absolutely extraordinary," he said. "It really proves that this is the land of opportunity."

For Schwarzenegger, his opportunity lasts 29 more days. The week was full of finality: accepting an award for environmental protection, dancing the hora outside the Capitol at his last menorah lighting as governor. The change about to come was evident in ways large — Brown's announcement of the budget session — and small, via Twitter, a method of communicating that hadn't even been invented when Schwarzenegger became governor.

Last week it was Brown who first tweeted to call attention to an article that said California's woes had been exaggerated and that, rather than dragging down the rest of the country, it had been propping up the other 49 states. Schwarzenegger, still the governor, was left only to add: "Agree."

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Each Sunday, The Week examines implications of major stories. It is archived at latimes.com/theweek

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 8800.story