That’s nice, but the problem is that your expenditures were soaring too, and many of these expenditures are on auto-pilot, thanks to how the voter initiatives have set much of this spending in stone, outside the reach of legislative review. Nearly 70% of the California public spending can’t be touched by the legislature.
This situation was first seen not last year, but in 2001 to 2003, when the income tax base took a serious slump as a result of the dot-com implosion. The systemic imbalance was first seen then. Then Sacto started with the budget games, trying to play catch-up with fees, borrowing and thimblerigging to make the income match the spending. Well, it now comes down to this: your income base is crumbling, your ad valorem base is collapsing (and never was sustainable in the first place, due to unsustainable housing valuations) and business taxation won’t carry the day as businesses will likely use this downturn as an opportunity to leave the state.
Sooner or later a recession was going to happen. Sooner or later the housing valuations were going to collapse. 6.5X median household income as a housing valuation is simply not sustainable. You’re now at about 3.4X, and you need to get down to about 2.8X. Anyone who had a sound head on their shoulders has seen for years that the tax base in California has become increasingly unstable. That’s why I quit buying bonds out of California after 2002. The homework I did back then was what made me implore the CA GOP to leave Davis in office and allow the DNC to own the whole mess. Ahnuld merely pushed the impact with the wall out a few years. Y’all were going to get into this situation regardless of who was in office. The exact year was the only thing open to debate.
Now you’re there. Your situation is intractable. Some of the spending enshrined in these silly voter initiatives has to be put on the chopping block.
I understand about automatic spending. But I also know having worked in that building for 15 years that a good Governor like Tom McClintock could have whipped the state into financial sanity. The 2001-2003 windfall was spent by the legislature on ongoing budget line items. All of those could be reversed and even eliminated in future years. Yes, the initiative process has created automatic spending burdens, but none of that is insurmountable with a real fiscal conservative at the helm.
Thank you for your rant. You must be insufferable to live with. I don’t disagree with anything you said. I know all about the state’s finances it’s been my life since 1990. Arnold and the Democrats drove our state into the ditch and Tom McClintock could have saved it. That’s my only point. End of discussion. Get lost.
I do. Your argument is pure ignorance; very similar to the big lie structure of most liberal presentations.
In this case: Nearly 70% of the California public spending can’t be touched by the legislature.
100% of California's public spending can be manipulated by a super majority of its Legislature with the concurrence of the executive.
California's budget is not a genetic monster, but rather a rudderless ship. Their is not a will in either the liberal legislature or the equally liberal executive to control spending.