Free Republic

<p>Sacramento -- California, operating entirely on borrowed cash, stumbled into a new fiscal year today soaked in red ink and with no rescue plan in sight as lawmakers and the governor missed the deadline to enact a new budget.</p> <p>Without a budget, the state is unable legally to make $1.5 billion in payments this month to schools, community colleges, trial courts and vendors who supply the state with everything from pencils to cafeteria food.</p>

<p>The budget mess comes with an opportunity for California to address long-ignored inequities in its tax structure. It will force the state -- voters and elected officials alike -- to consider the unpopular and the untouchable as ways to drag ourselves out of the state's fiscal bog.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Just last September, Gov. Gray Davis signed the current $99 billion state spending plan after the Legislature had filled a $23.6 billion hole.</p> <p>The budget followed an unprecedented two-month stalemate. Even then, lawmakers knew that more red ink would be flowing over the Capitol.</p>

<p>Sacramento -- On a grim, drizzly Friday, Gov. Gray Davis proposed an equally grim budget that cuts state spending by nearly $21 billion, increases taxes by $8.3 billion and hands off dozens of health and social programs to counties.</p> <p>If enacted by the Legislature, where it faces significant hurdles, the Democratic governor's proposal would reduce spending to less than California's 1999 budget.</p>

<p>Local elected leaders Friday angrily called the governor's proposal to shift vital services to cities and counties -- while stripping those agencies of $4.2 billion in vehicle fees -- a "shell game" that might be legally challenged.</p> <p>Officials were incensed that a key piece of Gov. Gray Davis' plan to fix the $35 billion state shortfall was to renege on a 1998 state promise to not slash the vehicle license fee revenues that local governments rely on to pay for critical public safety and health services.</p>

The Bush administration is poised to complete the biggest increase in government spending since the 1960s' "Great Society," the result of conducting the war on terrorism while substantially boosting the education and transportation budgets, according to a detailed analysis of government spending patterns...

Democrats began pushing a $2.1 trillion budget for next year through the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday, saying it focuses on a goal President Bush ignores: halting the use of Social Security funds to create federal surpluses. But Republicans preparing to push a fiscal blueprint of their own through the House say their plan, which largely resembles Bush's 2003 budget, has the right priorities. It would increase defense and domestic security spending while cutting other programs to bring deficits under control. The two competing proposals were taking separate paths through Congress Wednesday in an election-year showdown contrasting how each party...

Republicans in the House of Representatives will unveil details of a fiscal year 2003 budget Wednesday that includes nearly $399 billion for national defense, the largest increase in 20 years. But that budget will not be balanced, or maybe it will. House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) says the budgetary commitment to national defense answers a question on the mind of many Americans. "Our country has been attacked and we are at war," Nussle said Tuesday at a press conference to preview the budget. "Americans are asking, 'Is our country safe? Is my family safe?' and our budget answers...