That's the thing, the budget is such a complex issue that most people get lost in the first paragraph. There are so many different pots of money, some that the legislature can't touch because of federal restrictions or earmarked funds, money that goes to one pot or another and is included in the overall budget numbers, but in fact is "unbudgetable" meaning that the money goes for a specific purpose or doesn't come in.
There is actually very little discretionary spending in the budget ... however, instead of being responsible with the budget surpluses over the past three years, Davis and the Democrats grew the size of government by 37%. Also, every year there are automatic cost-of-living adjustments. If you don't give an entitlement the COLA, that's considered a cut.
Basically, the state doesn't have the money to pay its current bills, so it is borrowing from future revenue. But how is the state going to pay it's bills next month? And the month after that? And so on. We are so far in the hole that unless we cut back the spending INCREASES Davis instituted over the past three years, we'll never see the light of day. In fact, if we rolled back the size/cost of government to a mere three years ago when Davis was first elected, we wouldn't HAVE a budget deficit.
Dump Davis!
If Davis & co increased the size of the budget by 37% in three years, is that 37% non-discretionary and capable of being reduced?
I know some of the items were road maintenance, and we've now made that a mandate for gas tax spending, so presumably he can't cut that again.
What do you think of Simon's January budget, as published by the Davis campaign? The Davis campaign had a very interesting analysis of both budgets which I assume is highly slanted, but most likely honest in terms of the facts. One thing I noticed was that even they said that $2,237 billion were loans. As they say (page 6) "Loans must be repaid, thereby reducing resources available in future years." Simon has only $137m worth of loans, which hardly make a dent in his figures, making the Davis $2,237bln look outrageous.
I found it interesting - and a little alarming - that the loans were included in the savings totals for both candidates, even though they are not actual savings.
Davis also used the irresponsible formula of emphasizing the two-year total of his savings. For next year, Davis only proposed custting $2,449 bbln, while cutting $10,053bln next year. Simon cut $5.4 billion now and $8,216 later. So, although Simon cut $13.6bln and Davis cut $12.5bln, Simon made nearly 40% (39.9%) of his cuts in the current year, while Davis made only 19.5% of the cuts in the current year.
What this means is that Davis is really banking on a recovery, and then he plans to roll back his cuts in a massive fanfare, regaining the full support and gratitude of his fans.
D
Source: The PDF file attached to Davis' budget press release