Experts Expound

A billion dollars’ worth of budget cuts are announced with more on the way. Is there any good news at all in the triggered cuts? What are Brown’s options?

This is fiscal reality.  Brown was a truth-teller during the campaign and now he is having to do what he said.

There is no good news at all. California is dwindling and shrinking.

He channels his spiritual side and prays for Democratic super-majorities in both houses after next year’s elections. Then he starts signing budgets that make the cuts Republicans have always longed for – in Republican districts.

The only good news is the obvious indication that Draconian cuts show the utter bankruptcy of Republican political philosophy.

The good news is it didn’t require another all-night floor session. But, seriously, dribbling out the reductions like this is brilliant, because it gives voters a chance to see if they really want the kind of “streamlined” government Republicans say we need. And with the governor’s tax proposal, he’s told voters they can stop the reduction if they want to.
Long-thinking progressives will seize the chance to highlight the serious impacts on our state’s education and safety net for those least able to help themselves. It should help their chances of passing a tax on ‘the rich’ in 2012.

We have a governor and Legislature who programmed in cuts to education and those welfare programs that bleed our hearts, while the Republicans missed the whole political point. So the governor trumps those education and welfare cuts while allowing departments to hire more state workers (who will join unions), all while he is selling higher taxes. And an uneducated, or worse, complacent media ignores the whole play.

Everyone loves education, but paying for it is difficult. The cuts have to include deep reductions in education, and that means being in opposition to the CTA.

The cuts serve to remind anyone who pays attention that government must slash spending for education and programs that serve the disadvantaged because Republican legislators won’t allow a tax on the top 1 percent of income earners. It is a reminder not only in California but on the national stage, as well.

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