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The pile-on was in full effect within hours of Gov. Jerry Brown's announcement this week that California's budget deficit had grown to $15.7 billion, with The Week giving its national audience a summary of the Golden State's financial affairs. "California's financial apocalypse," the magazine offered. "A concise guide." Fox News played the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication," and host Greg Gutfeld proclaimed Brown captain of "the Titanic that is California, a state so broke it may ask Greece for a loan." On Friday, the Democratic governor slapped back on national TV. "This is not Europe," Brown told Charlie Rose on...

Poker players often use the phrase "betting on the come" to describe a willingness, if instincts and odds indicate, to wager big on the hope that they will draw winning cards. That's a perfectly valid tactic when one is playing with one's own money and therefore bearing the risk. But is it appropriate for California politicians to bet on the come by approving many billions of dollars in spending on very shaky assumptions that the money will be there when it's needed to pay the bills? Risk was the underlying theme of two hearings in the Capitol on Tuesday. One...

Just a few months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown chastised "declinists" and "dystopian journalists" for their pessimism about California, particularly about emerging from a deep recession. "Contrary to those critics who fantasize that California is a failed state, I see unspent potential and incredible opportunity," Brown told the Legislature in January, citing supposed signs of economic recovery. On Monday, however, Brown blamed a sluggish economy for revenues falling billions of dollars short of the rosy estimates in the budget he signed last June. "You can never get it quite right," Brown told reporters as he released a revised budget aimed at...

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday that the state budget deficit had grown by a remarkable 70 percent since January, but fiscal experts said the economy had little to do with it. They instead blamed a bad marriage of volatile capital gains and political intransigence that led state leaders last year to count on a huge upswing in revenues that never materialized. At the same time, corporate tax changes from 2009 appear to have cost California more than state officials ever realized. The Democratic governor says the general fund deficit has mushroomed from $9.2 billion to $15.7 billion. Most of the...

California's fiscal mess – which is more political than financial – was brought into razor-sharp focus Wednesday by three events. First was Sacramento Superior Court Judge David I. Brown's ruling that Controller John Chiang violated the state constitution last year when he cut off legislators' salaries by invoking a newly passed constitutional dictum that they would lose pay if they failed to pass a budget by June 15. Democratic lawmakers had passed a 2011-12 budget before then, but Gov. Jerry Brown immediately vetoed it as being hopelessly unbalanced. Chiang then cut off their paychecks. Brown quickly tossed legislators a lifeline...

The topic was "States and competitiveness in a global economy," but first off, the panel's moderator wanted Gov. Jerry Brown to give us a "sneak peek" at his 2012-13 budget revision, scheduled for next month. Brown demurred, but said, "It will be very interesting." In fact, "You'll hear howls of execration over the next 30 days," he told a gathering of Silicon Valley CEOs on Tuesday. That is, when he lays out additional cuts - watch out health and social services - beyond the $4 billion he's already asked for. Basically, some cuts that Brown wanted have been delayed by...

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June. In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown. In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller...

With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend. That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize. The pots: • What could be several billion dollars a year in "cap-and-trade" fees that industries must pay as part of the state's anti-greenhouse gas crusade. • Another billion-plus bucks that it's believed would appear were the state to change taxation of multi-state...

In a show of good faith one year ago, legislative Democrats slashed Medi-Cal, cut universities and reduced welfare grants to slice the state deficit 13 weeks before the constitutional deadline. But this year Democrats are refusing to go along with Gov. Jerry Brown's most controversial reductions, spurning his demand to have cuts in place by March. They oppose Brown's plan to halve the amount of time that unemployed adults can receive welfare-to-work benefits and to slash grants to children. Assembly Democrats have voted against his proposal to cut scholarship aid for 26,000 low-income students through higher grade requirements for Cal...

Solving California's public pension crisis must begin with honest numbers. So when top government administrators, who are supposed to be the neutral brokers, start advocating for cooking the books for political and budgetary reasons, we should be concerned. That's what happened last week as the California Public Employees' Retirement System took a small step toward realistically forecasting future investment returns. Peter Ng, employee benefits director for Santa Clara County, supported by his boss, County Administrator Jeff Smith, pleaded with CalPERS board members to override their actuary's advice because it would lead to increased short-term pension costs. While the investment forecast...

When Democrats control the state Legislature and all statewide offices, sooner or later they will end up fighting each other in court. One need look no further than the approaching showdown between legislative leaders and state Controller John Chiang. The issue was joined in January when Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and Senate President Darrell Steinberg sued their fellow Democrat over Chiang's decision last June to withhold lawmakers' pay after concluding the budget they passed was unbalanced. In a recent court filing, lawmakers argued that Chiang overstepped his authority in an effort to be "politically expedient.

Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday he is racing to clear the November ballot of two rival tax initiatives because failure will lead to severe ongoing budget problems and Democratic blame-trading. "If we get down the road and there are no taxes," he said, "there's going to be a lot of finger-pointing." The Democratic governor, who proposes to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners, said a proposed tax on millionaires would attract many of the same people who might otherwise support his plan, splitting the vote and likely leaving both measures to fail. "That would,...

Political machinations over the state budget dominate every legislative session, but this year's version of the annual budget game may be particularly bizarre due to a confluence of unusual factors, to wit: • Not only is it an election year, but incumbents and aspirants will be running in districts that have been altered, sometimes hugely, by the state's new redistricting commission. • This is also the first year for a new election system in which the top two finishers in the June primary, regardless of party, will face each other in November. • Legislators briefly lost their salaries last year...

This is the html version of the file http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/statement-Congress-letterhead-2nd%20hearing.pdf. Page 1 Leader Pelosi, Members of Congress, good morning, and thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation. Myname is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third year student at Georgetown Law, a Jesuit school. I’m also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them...

For the past two months, Gov. Jerry Brown has been selling the concept that were the Legislature to approve his proposed budget and voters to approve his tax increase, the state's fiscal house would be repaired. It's turning out to be more a pipe dream than a realistic plan. The courts and the Obama administration are stalling, perhaps permanently, many of the spending cuts that the 2011-12 budget had assumed. A Legislature controlled by Brown's fellow Democrats is refusing to jump-start more health and welfare reductions in his 2012-13 budget. Controller John Chiang has reported that spending is running $2.5...

Gov. Jerry Brown is counting on $6.5 billion too much through June 2013 even with a Facebook stock sale on the horizon, according to a new review by the state's fiscal analyst. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office has taken a more pessimistic view of capital gains in California over the next 16 months, though it acknowledges in its new report that predicting those totals is "notoriously difficult." California's heavy reliance on volatile capital gains income has been a huge reason why the state has found it so difficult to budget in recent years. The analyst's latest revenue forecast is not...

Democrats in Washington State’s House of Representatives have unveiled their budget proposal – HB 2127 – which they claim closes a $1 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes or borrowing money. In reality, the budget does raise taxes, and relies on accounting gimmicks to solve their $1 billion spending problem. The budget proposal, along with SB 2728, would allow counties in Washington State to add a 6-perent utility tax that in many instances would wind up on taxpayers’ cell phone bills. Washington State already has the 2nd highest national tax burden on wireless, with a combined state and federal rate...

It's not just the economic numbers that are looking up for President Obama. A new New York Times/CBS News poll puts his approval rating at 50 percent, his highest mark since May 2010 (except for a brief bump after Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in May). That's a couple of points better than the RealClearPolitics average as displayed in the chart, but the uptrend is clear. Now, let’s assume the economy continues to grow—not gangbusters, but something along the lines predicted by economists in the recent Wall Street Journal survey. We’re talking slow-but-steady 2.5 percent GDP growth and a...

California revenues last month lagged 5.5 percent behind what Gov. Jerry Brown expected in his just-proposed January budget, a development that Controller John Chiang termed "disappointing." Though the big spring revenue months and Facebook's public stock offering are still to come, the latest report may provide a cautionary signal for Democratic lawmakers who think Brown's forecast is too pessimistic. According to Chiang's office, the state fell $528.4 million behind the governor's latest projection for January, including a $525 million (6.3 percent) shortage in income tax collections. After the first seven months of the fiscal year, the state is $694 million...

If the subject is the state budget, you know what follows: What will be cut this time? This has been an annual discussion ever since California's economy imploded and tax revenues dried up. It was the central topic of state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier's town hall meeting in Concord last week, where he gave a primer on the arcane process by which Sacramento balances income and outflow. He talked about Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget for 2012-13, his planned cuts, projected revenues, assumed tax hikes, triggered cuts if the taxes do not pass, and the many meetings that will take place...