(CA) Governor seeks to cut programs Dems pledge to save

[alp227]

Source: SF Chronicle

Gov. Jerry Brown's latest budget proposal attempts to close a formidable $15.7 billion deficit, but the real debate at the Capitol in the next few weeks probably will be over how to cut just a fraction of the big amount.

That's because about $2 billion in the governor's budget represents permanent reductions in spending on state welfare, child care and other programs that Democratic leaders in the Senate and Assembly have pledged to protect.

Brown's other budget proposals might be more controversial with the Legislature if the state weren't facing such a large shortfall. Those include one-time solutions such as his proposal to seize almost $300 million from the national mortgage settlement that Attorney General Kamala Harris hoped to use to help distressed mortgage payers stay in their homes.

Some of Brown's other reductions, like delaying the repayment of some loans, won't cause a stir at all. The Legislature, which can pass a budget by a majority vote, has just under four weeks to approve a spending plan to cover the deficit by the June 15 deadline.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/21/MNTA1OJM8Q.DTL

[msongs]

1. jbudget with majority but no income increases except with 2/3 majority nt

[pnwmom]

2. The Governor's taken on an impossible and thankless job. n/t

[Lionessa]

3. With Dems like this, no wonder no one can tell much diff anymore

seems so many are simply pawns of the 1% trying to turn this country into a third world work force.

[Dokkie]

9. When your back is against the wall

you have to react. Unlike the federal government, California doesn't have a defense budget to cut, ability to print up as much cash as they need. They failed to save up during the boom time and now that the lean years are upon them, they are forced to cut(and raise taxes). You cut as much as you can without negatively affecting the economic growth of the state and those cuts usually come at the expense of the less fortunate ala stranded boaters cannibalizing the weak while they wait to be rescued.

Sad but that is how the world works

[KamaAina]

4. I just learned that corporate tax loopholes are largely to blame

Why, you ask, were tax receipts down so sharply, even though the economy is recovering? Scott Graves of California Budget Project just informed the audience on a teleconference that the answer lies in the corporate tax loopholes passed under Ahh-nuld: they're costing the state even more than we thought.

[JDPriestly]

5. I would like to know how much of the tax revenues from Californians goes to

pay debt amassed during prior Republican administrations.

I quickly searched the budget and found a lot of discussion about paying down the debt, but no numbers that indicate how much debt service costs per year.

[truedelphi]

6. The big probnlem in California is three fold -

One situation is that when the state is rolling in dough, until just recently there were never any provisions to put some of the money aside. So you see surpluses all through 1998, 1999, and 2000. Then when the dot com bubble burst, and the economy in Calif. went stagnant, there wasn't any "rainy day" funding to turn too. California is bust and boom, bust and boom. Always was, always will be.

Secondly for every single dollar of tax revenue the California citizens have to offer up to the Federal government, the state only usually gets a 73 cent return.

People who don't live in California don't understand what that means. The state of Calif. has 37 million people (although that might be down to 36 million on account of "white flight" and the secret deportation of many people from other countries. ) The state, when times were good, such as during the housing boom of 2004, 05 and 06 has the sweet position of being the fifth wealthiest nation on earth. So over the years, Californians have really socked money away to Washington.

Therefore, circa 2009, when Schwartzenegger asked Geithner for a loan of twenty billions of dollars, in a sense his request was an insult to us Californians. We should have been able to get the money outright. There are laws on the books that legally require the Federal government to re-imburse any state that is making suitable provisions for immigration.

And the state itself has historically always been owed that money. Going all the way back to the nineteen eighties, there was at that point in time already an twenty eight billion dollar amount that the state was supposed to receive as reimbursement for its expenses on immigrants. (Schools, hospitals, jails, social workers, roads, AFDC etc.) Geithner refused that governor the loan. But then the Federal government went on to spend some 255 billions of dollars "modernizing the military," and offering up weapons systems to the UAE and to Israel.

Then you look at where the state of California and local governments typically gets its revenue. That would be from property taxes and income taxes. It is obvious that if in many places in Calif., the unemployment rate is 18%, then trying to recover some revenue through the state income tax is going to be a problem. People aren't working, and the people who are are not making as much. Meanwhile, to offset their lack of funds, people are on welfare, Medical state/county insurance and food stamps. So expenses have risen while state and local income has declined.

Then when you look to the value of property itself, there is a huge problem. For amusement's sake, I used to "looky-loo" through real estate offerings back in 2005 and 2006. At that point in time, there was only one house per fiscal quarter that fell under the
$ 150K price. And that home would be a mobile trailer on a very minimal stretch of land, with the foundations and flooring being rotting out.

Right now, it is hard to find a single home in the area that is for more than $ 150K. Also the average home value has plummeted from a high of $ 350K to 425K to just around $ 140K. Since that means people pay less in local property taxes, there is a real budget crunch.

On edit: there is also the matter of the fact that the Obama Administration decided to gut the medical marijuana clinic situation. Huge loss of revenue to local businesses. My local strip mall, which always had one empty store front, now has two - one being the medical marijuana clinic that was put out of business. The local newspaper, which used to really take in lots of money in ad revenue from physicians offering services for medical prescription cards to the clinics themselves has no revenues from those sources. It is running poetry and quotes int eh empty spaces. And some 3,500 good paying jobs were destroyed by the DOJ actions.

The medical marijuana clinics were offering up some 125 millions of dollars in tax revenues to the state, with additional revenues to the local municipalities and counties.

[JDPriestly]

7. With the exception that I am not so keen on medical marijuana (I think more research may be needed o

the long-term effects of marijuana on a user's life), I totally agree with you.

[truedelphi]

10. I think going way way back to the Nixon era, the people he

asked to look into the matter stated emphatically that every bit of research they could find shows that the major obstacle in terms of risk to the user is the prison terms that the users face. Not a health risk - but the risk of prison was what was the most obvious and awful "side effect" of the drug.

And both Mark Leno, a Democrat, and Schwatzennegger himself put together a legal package, still in effect, during the final days of Ahnold's term, that makes it difficult for the police to bust people for small amounts.

I researched as much data as my brain could hold about nine-ten years ago. And I found out that prior to the state proposition de-criminalizing the medical use of marijuana it was the elderly and the lower income (so it is fair to say, "people of Color&quot who were most negatively impacted by the threat of jail time.

In fact, there were so many photos provided to me by various agencies of groups of elderly women with MS in wheel chairs who had to do their full sentence. When you look at the fact that the king pins who are out there selling cocaine and heroin do not do their full sentences, as they can become snitches for the police department, but that Grannie with her little plot of marijuana has no one to snitch on, it just became heart breakingly clear that allowing medical marijuana is the thing to do.

And even in the late nineties there were plenty of references of Big Pharma using and testing the cannibinoids for specific purposes. But of course, with Big Pharma getting its hands on the product, it will cost the patient god only knows how much for a minor amount. That is one of the real things that figures into this: Obama like any other politician, knows he will continue to get Big Pharma's campaign contributions if he helps them keep their profit margins.

My dad, who was someone who used to make bathtub gin in the days of prohibition, also saw the prohibition of marijuana in the same terms as I see it. Yeah, there are problems - who would want people smoking the stuff and driving? But that is happening anyway, just as with alcohol. So yea, there would have to be regulations. Just as you cannot sell teenagers cigarettes or liquor, so too marijuana should be kept legally out of bounds for those who are underage.

[coalition_unwilling]

8. Brown's silence about the Oakland PD and Occupy has pretty much

caused me to write him off.

But does anyone know whether the proposals include any attempt to rein in prison-industrial-legislative complex that has run amok over the past 30 years?