Posted on 05/27/2009 6:04:07 AM PDT by Hawk720
In California's latest doom-and-gloom announcement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Finance on Tuesday proposed closing the state's main welfare program, releasing nonviolent prisoners one year early and shuttering up to 80 percent of state parks to shrink the state's $24.3 billion budget deficit.
Schwarzenegger wants $5.6 billion in new cuts to replace a like amount of borrowing he proposed in his budget plan earlier this month. The Republican governor previously asked for more than $15 billion in other savings by slashing schools and Medi-Cal, laying off 5,000 state workers and borrowing money from local governments.
The governor's plan would release a year early about 19,000 nonviolent, non-serious prisoners not convicted of sex offenses, saving $120 million. He also would seek $790 million in savings by reducing inmate services such as substance abuse counseling and vocational education.
The governor proposes saving $150 million by retaining a two-day furlough for state workers.
Schwarzenegger would cut Medi-Cal services such as dialysis, breast cancer treatment for women over 65 and non-emergency care for undocumented immigrants.
Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of the Assembly Budget Committee, said it would be more responsible to seek additional taxes.
"With this proposal, the governor's made it very clear he'd rather throw women and children out of the lifeboat before he raises taxes," she said.
But Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said the state's economy cannot sustain further tax increases so there are no other options.
"I think everybody here would agree, Republicans and Democrats alike, that we would not want to make these drastic reductions that we're going to be making if we didn't have to," Niello said. "But the unfortunate fact is, we have to."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
What would a bus service cost to truck the illegals back? That would be the first place I would look for cost savings, not women over 65.
It’s interesting that lawmakers in Cali turn to letting inmates out into the streets before they consider touching unionized employees or their pensions.
Gee, are the lawmakers pissed off at the people a little. The people voted down all the taxes and crap they tried to foist, so the petulent little lawmakers are going to make them suffer by releasing criminals, closing parks and cutting services to the sick and elderly.
How about cutting GOVERNMENT STAFF AND WASTE, and cutting any and all support for ILLEGALS!!!!
California has a deficit of which almost 60% is services to ILLEGALS!
They’re trying to punish voters for saying “no additional spending” by cutting everything that hurts voters, not gov’t. “Oh, you DON’T want more criminals on the street? medically needy falling thru the widening cracks? closing of parks? anything else that YOU find worthy? Fine - give us more money.” Then they’ll run the vote again, and expect, er, more favorable results; if not, they’ll play that game even harder.
CA taxpayers are in for a very long, painful fight.
Several of the latest cuts were eye-openers, but the largest was the wholesale elimination of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids Program, which provides grants to parents that people commonly refer to as "welfare."
So now they are trying to refer to welfare as "grants to parents".
It will be interesting to see if and how he implements this.
What a nice Orwellian name
So where’s the cuts in the programs that were doubled in the last ten years? Honestly Arnie, did we double our state parks int the last ten years? Did we double our prison population in the last ten years? If not, why cut these programs.
Take a good look at the budget, and cut the programs that grew the most. Leave the ones that didn’t alone.
You guys are dumber than a bucket of rocks up there.
end welfare but give bureaucrats 2 days off without pay.
right.
sheeple are going to fall for it aren’t they?
I heard somewhere that illegals cost California 10 BILLION dollars a year.
Does anyone know if that is true and where confirmation can be linked to?
That number was published in 2005, IIRC. I have seen 12 bill in many articles and use that number.
1. Eliminate all services to illegals except any emergency care needed to get them back to their country.
2. Privatize 2 prisons. Rinse, repeat.
3. Cut pay for all state employees making over 3,000 a month.
4. Reduce or eliminate the state capital gain tax.
5. Reduce the state income tax by 2%.
6. Reduce administrative positions in school districts.
7. Build 20 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years.
8. Eliminate legislative staff positions like the elevator operators in the capitol building.
9. Cut state and local pensions back to the level of 1998.
10. Prohibit public employee unions from contributing to those with whom they negotiate their contracts and who approve their contracts.
11. Cal spends 9,000 a year per school student. I propose we give vouchers in ten school districts for $7,000 per student. A classroom of 25 would cost $175,000 instead of $225,000. They could easily pay the teacher half of that and use the rest for admin, equipment, supplies etc.
There are 6.3 million students in Cal. If you do the entire system, you save $12 bill a year and introduce competition into the education system.
12. More oil exploration and drilling.
looks like he dusted off the Clinton playbook on how to handle a government shut-down and just slipped a new cover on it
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