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| Economy |
| Schwarzenegger: This year's budget gap may hit $7 billion |
| 2009-11-12 |
| Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated Monday that California's budget will fall out of balance by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, on top of a $7.4 billion gap already projected for 2010-11. If true, state leaders would confront at least a $12.4 billion to $14.4 billion problem when Schwarzenegger releases his budget in January. California currently has an $84.6 billion general fund budget. The Republican governor spoke with The Fresno Bee editorial board Monday after signing a bill placing a water bond on the November 2010 ballot. He emphasized deep spending cuts as a budget solution but did not mention tax increases. Schwarzenegger and legislators agreed to cuts to education and social services, as well as temporary tax hikes, in two budget deals earlier this year. "We are not out of the woods yet. ... The key thing is, we have to go and still make cuts and still rein in the spending," Schwarzenegger said. "It will be tougher because I think the low-hanging fruits and the medium-hanging fruits are all gone. I think that now we are going to the high-hanging fruits, and very tough decisions still have to be made." The state is $1 billion behind in tax revenues through the first three months of the 2009-10 fiscal year. Courts also have blocked some cuts in the current budget, such as in-home care reductions. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 Here's an idea: QUIT SPENDING |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-11-12 13:50 |
| #5 I read somewhere that CA has not fired one single state employee due to budget issues. Can this be true? |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2009-11-12 12:26 |
| #4 "It will be tougher because I think the low-hanging fruits and the medium-hanging fruits are all gone. I think that now we are going to the high-hanging fruits, and very tough decisions still have to be made." Hanging fruits? |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2009-11-12 10:08 |
| #3 While we're on the Dream List theme, let's eliminate the Office of Stress Reduction that provides counseling to SEIU employees who work for the Victim Assistance Program (sarcasm added). |
| Posted by: HammerHead 2009-11-12 08:44 |
| #2 Crosspatch, your wishes are so unrealistic you may as well wish for California to start planting money trees in place of all the agriculture that will soon be gone because of water restrictions. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-11-12 07:08 |
| #1 The state wastes a lot of money on school class size mandates. They reduced classroom size by 1/3 and got no increase in performance for it. Consider it a failed experiment. You would do better going back to a 30 student classroom, firing the worst 33% of the teachers and closing 33% of the schools that have been kept open solely from this class size mandate. This would give more kids exposure to the best teachers and get dead wood out of the system. We need to actually start executing condemned prisoners instead of treating death row as a welfare program for the prison guard union. I would favor execution for people committing their third violent felony. Let's stop warehousing them for life. Sort of a "three major strikes and you are 'out' of the planet". Reduce CalTrans bureaucracy. Allow local and county jurisdictions more leeway in doing their own projects without having to run to CalTrans every few minutes to get approval to repair a sidewalk just because the sidewalk abuts a state road. Stop making MediCal such a great program that people prefer it over private insurance. Stop the pension madness. Those are just some beginnings. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2009-11-12 04:03 |