The fine print of the voluminous budget reveals just how much spending, and deficits, have increased under Schwarzenegger. The $97.9 billion in general fund spending that he proposes for 2006-07 would be $18.1 billion or 22.7 percent more than his first budget spent two years ago, historic data show, while revenues would have increased by just $9 billion.

California Insider
A Weblog by Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub
January 10, 2006

No fat lip. Just fat

The other day the governor fell off his motorcycle. Today he fell off the wagon. The budget-balancing wagon, that is.

Schwarzenegger had been making slow if not spectacular progress in balancing the state budget since he took office in the fall of 2003. The structural gap between spending and revenues estimated for the coming year shrank from about $16 billion when he took office to less than $4 billion, and a balanced budget was actually in sight. But his proposal today would spend $7 billion more next year, while the state’s revenues are expected to increase by just $4 billion. He has stopped making progress. Now he is going backwards.

The governor is proposing to spend about $98 billion next year while revenues are expected to total $91.5 billion. He would cover that gap with money left in the budget by what is believed to have been a one-time windfall of tax payments. Then he would run for re-election, roll the dice and hope for the best.

(snip)

But the bottom line is that this budget would begin with a positive balance of $7 billion (thanks to a one-time surge in tax revenues) and end, if all goes well, with a balance of about $700 million. Then, next January, most of the spending in this plan would continue, and grow, according to law, while revenues will almost certainly not keep pace.

Mike Genest, the governor’s director of finance, estimates that whoever is governor one year from today will be looking at a structural gap of about $5.5 billion, including about $2 billion the law requires be put into the state’s long-term reserve. And the surpluses that have papered over the past two years’ operating shortfalls would be gone. That means the governor in January 2007 would have to propose $5.5 billion in spending cuts, tax hikes or a combination of the two to balance the budget.

(snip)

OK, Its getting clearer, Yes Yes, I see it now.. ;-)

129.9 Billion

What a crock. Given the level of fraud in selling Proposition 58, Schwarzenegger never gave crap about a balanced budget; he was lying through his teeth.

Weintraub is really digging in. Put on that green eye shade and read the rest. ;-)

any figure as to what the current state debt is???

bump

I'll get the hip waders . ;-)

What a crock. Given the level of fraud in selling Proposition 58, Schwarzenegger never gave crap about a balanced budget; he was lying through his teeth.

I think McClintock covered that pretty well in his press release (posted here). As some said from the beginning, those bonds were not to refinance old debt, but to supplement future deficit spending.

(Snip)

“This deficit is funded entirely with borrowed funds from Proposition 57, approved by voters in 2004. Although the public was promised that this bond would only be used to pay for past deficits, it is in fact being used to cover deficits for 2004 ($0.6 billion), 2005 ($2.9 billion) and now 2006 ($6.4 billion).

There is this on the state treasurer's site HERE, CALIFORNIA'S BUDGET DEBT: . it has it closing in on 25 Billion. Keep in mind , this is not all state debt , however and this is posted on a site that also has Phil Angelides on it. ;-).

That state debt figure is closer to 50 Billion, in total.

There's lots of other stuff at the http://www.lao.ca.gov/ site.

I bet he can balance a motorcycle better than he could balance the budget... Well, maybe not.

It's all about marketing, after all.

He saw a shot to contribute to society, help everybody out,

He sold himself as all for reform and for change.,. (obviously big change.. Ka-Ching Ka-Ching!) ;-)

3 years will have been wasted ,, and for what? :-\

nearly three years after voters dumped Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to fix the state's tortured finances, the budget is still out of whack. And as spending climbs, it may ooze red ink indefinitely.

Love it when you don't have to read beyond the first paragraph.

Thanks Norm

I was trying to remember what the debt was when we were dealing with the Dimwit Davis?
I know he under estimated it and then during the recall the REAL number came out...if memory serves Davis claimed in the 30's and the real number was in the 40's billions wasn't it?

I'd need to look it up , but it was nowhere near current levels,, 40 at best if that, if my mind is not failing me.. I'll see if I can pull it up.

Oops, I was off a bit.. found this . excerpt with link

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/170xlyas.asp?pg=1

The Red Ink State
Gray Davis as governor: every bit as bad as you've heard.
by Stephen Moore
10/06/2003, Volume 009, Issue 04

Weekly Standard

...nothing can compare with Davis's ineptitude in handling the budget crisis. In five years, he has somehow converted a $12 billion budget surplus into a $38 billion deficit. In 1998 California had the largest surplus of any state in the nation. Today, California's deficit is larger than the deficits of the other 49 states combined. As the state's chief financial officer, Davis has allowed the debt rating of the state to be downgraded three times in three years; its status is now just marginally above that of junk bonds.

All of this grim news has been fairly well documented. But what is not well known is the hideous depth of this fiscal swamp. I have just returned from Sacramento, where I spent several days combing through the financial numbers, and I am convinced that, as angry and nervous as Californians are, they don't know the half of it. The Democratic line is that the worst of the budget disaster is behind California. Hardly. This state is a lot closer to an Argentina-style financial meltdown than a balanced budget. Every day that the Gray Davis-Cruz Bustamante administration stays in power, the state plunges another $20 million in debt.



In this year's budget process, Davis resorted to bookkeeping chicanery so fanciful it would have made a WorldCom accountant blush. Instead of balancing the budget, as is conventionally defined and required by the state constitution, Davis borrowed $10.7 billion and then declared the cash inflow "revenues" to put the budget in balance. This loan came on top of the $50 billion in outstanding state and local bonds California is already carrying on its books. John Cogan of the Hoover Institution, a leading expert on the California state budget, grimly notes that "Davis is the first governor in California history to eviscerate the balanced budget requirement by issuing billions of dollars of debt without a vote of the people." Then he adds: "This may also be the first time a state has ever balanced its budget by borrowing."

2003 .. In this year's budget process, Davis resorted to bookkeeping chicanery so fanciful it would have made a WorldCom accountant blush. Instead of balancing the budget, as is conventionally defined and required by the state constitution, Davis borrowed $10.7 billion and then declared the cash inflow "revenues" to put the budget in balance. This loan came on top of the $50 billion in outstanding state and local bonds California is already carrying on its books.

His motor cycle has training wheels...

Ahnold is only giving the Sheeple what they want. People don't want fiscal responsibility. People want government spending. The only time they care about deficits is when it results in higher taxes... and even then, they don't care unless the tax hike effects them personally.