By Martha Montelongo
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The big “news” from Sacramento this week is that the state budget is in trouble again. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state is going to come up $4 billion short of revenue projections this year. Now, massive cuts are on the table, including lopping off a full week of the school year.
But this week’s news wasn’t surprising: anyone who’s paid any attention to California’s budget drama already knew the $4 billion wasn’t going to show up. The state Legislature needed to pass a budget to start collecting their paychecks again, so they conjured up an extra $4 billion in projected revenue at the last second to meet the virtually useless requirement that they pass a “’balanced” budget. The budget – and the magical $4 billion – was just the latest way to kick the can down the road and refusing to deal with our state’s biggest budget problem: wasteful spending.
Decades of reckless overspending have put California in the dire position it’s in today. A Politicians and bureaucrats have fed at the public trough for years and years, larding up the state’s budget with perks, entitlements and wasteful spending programs. Making things worse, special interests have duped voters into creating countless new programs and spending mandates through the initiative process. The special interests pitch voters on the benefits of programs like stem cell researchor high speed rail, while very intentionally the neglecting to mention the rampant spending and bureaucracy these measures lock in, or the impact on our ability to pay for existing critical programs like education or public safety.
The latest ballot measure boondoggle is the so-called California Cancer Research Act, a ballot measure that’s going before voters this June. This measure would raises taxes by nearly $1 billion a year, just to duplicate programs that already exist. What’s worse, it mandates a whole new bureaucracy that can spend $16 million a year on overhead and $117 million every year on new buildings and facilities. This spending continues year after year, regardless of whether California can afford it or not.
Even worse, this new massive spending program is overseen by a new bureaucracy run by political appointees. But that isn’t surprising either: the measure is being pushed by a longtime career politician who used to run the state Senate. Who could be surprised that former legislator was the one to come up with a new spending program run by political appointees?
But the massive spending and bureaucracy in this boondoggle ballot measure is just the tip of the iceberg. Though this measure requires Californians to pay billions of dollars in new taxes, it doesn’t actually require the money to be spent in California! Our state already suffers from the worst business climate and some of the highest unemployment and tax rates in the nation, and now we’re being asked to pay more just to ship that money out of state? Of all the asinine policy prescriptions for the state, shipping California’s money across state lines has to rank near the top.
This measure has all the trappings of other projects sold to voters as magical cures to myriad woes that quickly devolved into good old-fashioned California money pits. Like high-speed rail and stem-cell research – or even the measure created First 5 LA, there is virtually no accountability and no guarantees that the new spending program has to deliver results. The fact is that this measure is just like the state’s lottery, where voters may never really know how much of the money goes into actual research not bureaucracy.
Our state didn’t find itself in our budget crisis overnight. Rather, California’s newfound standing as America’s Greece is the result of one boondoggle spending program piled on top of another. Politicians, in the thrall of the myriad special interests that run Sacramento, are only too happy to raise your taxes and spend more of your money. The only solution is restore fiscal discipline and sanity so that the state can begin to extract itself from the mess it’s in. Saying no to the latest ballot measure boondoggle next June ballot and this measure is a good place to start.
Martha Montelongo is a writer and radio commentator. Martha can be heard on GadFly Radio, Tuesday’s at 8:00 pm on www.latalkradio.com
I don’t know enough about the specific initiative in question, and the basis for your assertions about it, to comment about it. But the notion that California is “America’s Greece” caught my eye.
What makes Greece “Greece” today? Many cite overly favorable benefits packages. But, if I understand it correctly, that has included retiring at 50. By that standard, California is not Greece. Many of us here will be lucky to retire at 70 — if at all.
Another thing that makes Greece “Greece” is an atrocious record of collecting taxes due from its wealthy. Is California Greece in that respect? I’m eager to have that conversation. Of course, exempting the wealthy from taxation can have the same effect as their evasion of taxes — and I’m even more eager to have that conversation.
Um, most public sector employees can retire at 50 (cops/fire) 55 (non-public safety).
So while you’re toiling away ’til 70 and beyond be sure to thank your gov’t bureaucrat neighbor who’s been pulling down a hefty pension for 15 years and maybe even got second income going back to his old job, doing exactly the same thing.
Except for the grape leaves and the ouzo the system strikes me as very Greek-like, dysfunction-wise.
Tony: My answer to you got long and (I’ll contend) thoughtful, so rather than detract from the discussion of this initiative I put it into a separate post: http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2011/11/on-public-employees-some-greece-with-your-thanksgiving-turkey/.
looks like we will have to get ready next nov moombeam and the public emp unions goons along with the teachers are going to ask for more taxes .. and you wonder why this state is so messed up . off to the voting booths again to STOP THE TAX COLLECTING DEMS .
Yeah, as I said, stopping the tax collectors is what made Greece what it is today.
(Overspending on the military and police, by the way, made Rome what it was circa 500 A.D.)
One thing the state can do to collect more revenue without increasing taxes.
Have everyone file the 540 ez short form. No deductions or credits, everyone pays the same rate.
And since the demo’s are like 75 percent of the state, they will get to pay about 75 percent of the addssional revenues. And be able to brag about not increasing anyones taxes.
As long as revenue raising is held hostage by the republican minority members that have their tongues firmly impaled in Grover Norquist’s fundament, we’re going to have a budget problem.
Hear him, hear him.
Cut a check Rapscallion.
If you would pay your USE TAX on your out of state purchases, and only deduct from your income legal deduction and not what you think you can get away with, and put ALL your income into your tax returns.
The state would not have a revenue crises.
If the state would pass a tax on all registered democrats to close the gap, I think the Republicans would go along with it.
rapfarts haaaa oh yeah the reps are holding calif hostage . while the dems have a super majorty here UGHHH. thank god we can stop YOUR KIND . FROM RAISING TAXES WITH THE 2/3 .
Look, puddinhead, that 2/3 requirement you’re whooping about means that Democrats DO NOT HAVE a supermajority. Did you think that that was just an expression, like “funmajority,” rather than an actual word with an actual definition?
I’ve put one phrase in all caps to make you feel at home.
So, who or what was the speical interest that financed getting this initiative on the ballot? Follow the money, I bet.
OH MR ROUGH CUT DIAMOND HERES SOME CAPS FOR YOU YOU TOOL . . DO YOU REALLY THINK REPS CAN PASS ANYTHING IN CALIF WITH THAT CONGRESS . ALL IN NICE BIG CAPS TO MAKE YOUR DAY .
That would make you a CAPITALIST !
Among other things.
“Among other things”.
Now what would the among other things be: Brains, intellect, commonsense, values, self worth etc……
And what makes you a liberal? I would say: lack of common sense, ignorance, money, being liberal is cooler than being a conservative, among other, more sinister things Mr. Diamond.
…….calling me Mr. Diamond !
Are you trying to flatter me, or offend me ?
Please explain.
Sorry, it would not be an offense, cause really you liberals are like one big interconnected drone…All with the same views.
This State is the poster child for why you don’t want a liberal majority in the driver seat. It is also a breeding ground for RINOS.
Because of this States slow but inevitable down fall it will be this countries red flag to steer in a different direction, morally and ideologically.
Great post Ms. Montelongo. My only quibble would be with your claim that the Legislature passed the gimmicky budget; it was the Democrats in the Legislature (no longer needing a 2/3 majority to pass a budget) who acted only to protect their paychecks, and not to address California’s crushing debt.
The crushing debt will only be solved with revenues and (with a few possible exceptions like split roll) that still requires 2/3. And, of course, there have been dramatic cuts in services, so I don’t know what you even think you’re talking about here.
Actually, history has proven that we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. For example, if we just increased total government expenditures at the rate of inflation over the past 4 years, we’d have a more than manageable deficit of $483 billion for this year. Instead, our Spender in Chief and the Democrats in Congress have increased the deficit 41% in just four years. There are also studies showing that taxing the rich to the extent you libs want wouldn’t have any appreciable impact on the deficit. Yet you continue to ignore the problem and turn to spending as the way out of our deficit.
I’m not sure whether you’re discussing the situation for the state (which was what the conversation prior to your comment addressed, hence the discussion about the 2/3 requirement for increasing revenues) or the federal level (which is what I take from the use of the words “in Chief” and “Congress.”)
You’re wrong either way, but please clarify so that I can point out how you’re wrong in only the way that matters.
There are also studies showing that ice cream cone sales cause forest fires, so you’ll have to do better than asserting the existence of tendentious studies.
Not that it matters to someone as arrogant and creative as yourself, but here’s the WSJ weighing in:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704621304576267113524583554.html
And since you could care less what the WSJ says, even if it is factual, here’s Ezra Klein admitting that taxing the rich won’t solve the problems:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/can_we_close_the_budget_defici.html