Posted on 06/15/2005 6:56:09 PM PDT by calif_reaganite
SB 77 BUDGET Speech by Senator Tom McClintock June 15, 2005
We have once again been assured that this is a balanced budget. I remember the same assurances from the same quarters last year and the year before that. They have no credibility.
Here is what the Legislative Analyst's Office reported on Monday regarding the state's general fund. The LAO estimates that we'll close the current fiscal year having spent $82 billion and received $80 billion, ending that year $2 billion in the red.
This budget, they estimate, will spend $89 billion and receive $84 billion, ending the budget year an additional $5 billion in the red. You're not even heading in the right direction.
Three numbers tell you a lot about this budget: 5, 6 and 9. Five percent is the LAO's estimate of combined population and inflation growth next year. Six percent is their estimate of revenue growth. Once again, our revenues substantially exceed inflation and population growth. Once again, this is not a revenue problem.
Nine percent. That's the problem. That's the growth in state spending in this budget. By means of comparison, the average growth of general fund expenditures during the Davis years was not 9 percent - it was 6 percent. So this is very much in the tradition of the budgets that got us into this mess. In fact, it is measurably worse than the budgets that got us into this mess.
I would once again remind you of the First Rule of Holes: "When you're in one, stop digging." You folks are digging faster.
Now how is it that some Senators can even pretend the budget balances? Because of billions of dollars of borrowed money either carried over from last year or new borrowing contemplated in this conference report. But I have news for you: borrowing is not revenue. Borrowing is what happens when you're spending more than your revenue.
It has been suggested that there is a nefarious effort to hold the budget hostage by forces outside the legislature. What nonsense. Once the Governor places the budget on our desks on January 10th, it ceases to be his budget and it becomes the legislature's budget. When the Governor took office, I warned that the same legislature that got us into this mess was not going to get us back out again. I thank you, my Democratic colleagues, for so effectively backing me up on that.
One other point. These are issues that the legislature once worked through on its own when the constitutional budget process was honored. But by abandoning that process, the leadership has by-passed all the debates and negotiations and give-and-take that once produced relatively balanced and relatively on-time budgets. The new process is to present a conference report to the legislature for a take-it-or-leave-it vote at the 11th hour with no opportunity for those discussions to take place.
And the result is another horribly unbalanced budget - measurably worse than the budgets passed during the Davis years that racked up $26 billion of deficit-related general obligation debt - all for our children to enjoy.
So let's be clear. According to the LAO, their latest estimate of the current year operating deficit is $2 billion. This budget has an operating deficit of $5 billion. While population and inflation will grow 5 percent and revenues will grow 6 percent, spending will grow 9 percent. An AYE vote on this bill endorses a spending plan substantially less balanced than last year's, and growing substantially faster than it grew during the Davis years.
Bon appetit.
I remember that clearly, and it rings as true now as it did then. My wife and I cast our votes for this gentleman for governor, a few weeks before leaving the state for good.
Tom McClintock for President in '08. I'll sell my house, quit my operations and go work for him on minimum wage. Hey RINO @sswipes: take note!
What a shame he isn't President.
Amazing to hear an elected official telling it like it is.
This is excellent. Would be a great idea to push his office and the state GOP to try and get this published as a guest editorial or letter to the editor in every paper possible. Let's test Kinsley. Would also make a great TV commercial.
Well we tried our best to get McClintock elected governor but our efforts just weren't good enough. Hopefully RINOld will take the 5 Freeway South next year and Tom will run for governor again.
No kidding. He's the best thing that could have happened to California's budget troubles. (I can see this quote with "...could never have..." added by a Schwartzenegger voting Freeper).
California ping...
I agree, McClintock would be governor if not for the enthusiasm of the left wing of the Republican party for (R)-nold.(R)-nold may not be as bad as a Democrat, but he's definitely no McClintock.
Nothing beats a straight talking, straight shooter with a white hat. It's always great to see the Sacramento gang get their grits handed back in a bucket.
McClintock Ping List
Let me know via freepmail if you want on or off this list.
"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
-- Ronald Reagan
I hope he has his sights set on something more than Governor of CA. That boy has a clear mind.
What is that Beach Boy's song - "Oh wouldn't it be nice.."
I thought Arnold was spending less? Why did spending go from 82-89 billion when inflation has been almost stagnant?
California's fiscal problems are partisan however. Both political parties are contributing.
The legislature, chocked full of single issue, liberal ideologues keeps generating legislation that is not economically indexed (grows uncontrollably with age).
The executive is headed by a individual who can't cut spending, even if his political life depended on it. He simply can't bring himself to make budget reductions.
California, due to an unprecedented influx of an uneducated, relatively unproductive immigrant class can't remove itself form it's economic predicament through growth of the state's GDP. It is simply not possible. The size of the class consuming public services is simply too large, relative to the producing class, to creat positive changes under conditions of modest economic growth.
Something has to give. Either present and future entitlements to public services have to be curtailed or the ratio of those consuming public services to those providing public services needs to be reduced.
At this time neither the legislature nor the executive appears willing to do either. The legislature seeks an increase in taxation to support a larger government sector while the executive attempts to dis-empower the legislature in order to curb the growth in the rate of spending increases but neither is willing to reduce government spending.
Davis would have never been recalled if McClintock was the only Republican choice. McClintock's chief of staff, Stoos, and his extremist buddies would have sunk Tom's boat.
S.S.D.D.
As long as there are more brain-dead liberals and their camp-followers than there are fiscal conservatives, we're screwed.
The "extremist" canard. McClintock is more libertarian than fundie.
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