Jerry Brown Calls for 4-Day Workweek to Trim $15.7B Deficit [View all]

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) California Governor Jerry Brown proposed a four-day workweek to reduce pay for state employees and $8.3 billion of other cuts, mostly in welfare and medical care for the poor, to help close a $15.7 billion budget deficit.

Trimming the standard week would be the equivalent of a 5 percent pay cut, saving $400 million a year, Brown said today in revising his budget for the year beginning July 1. Health care for the poor would take the biggest reduction, about $1.2 billion, with $1.1 billion sliced from welfare and care for the disabled. School spending would grow $1.5 billion less than planned.

“I said in the beginning, when I ran for this job, that it’s taken a long time, nearly a decade, to get into this mess,” Brown said at a briefing for reporters in Sacramento. “We’re not going to get out of it in a year.”

California, with the world’s ninth-biggest economy, lost more than 1 million jobs in the recession that struck in 2007, reducing the most populous U.S. state’s revenue by 24 percent. The new deficit estimate increases the urgency of the governor’s plans to boost income taxes on top earners to the highest in the nation, and raise sales levies that now top all states. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-14/brown-calls-for-8-3-billion-cuts-to-fill-15-7-billion-deficit.html