Business News
California budget crisis deepens as voters nix deficit-cutting plan
May 20, 2009, 7:00 GMT
San Francisco - The state of California will likely have to make deep slashes in public spending after state voters Tuesday rejected a package of measures designed to reduce the budget deficit with taxes and bond offers.
However, deep cuts would have been likely anyway, as the plans rejected in Tuesday's referendum would have only lowered the budget deficit to 15.4 billion dollars, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, quoting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
With the rejection, the state now faces a 21.3-billion-dollar budget hole. The paper reported that the state will now have to consider even deeper cuts to education, public safety and health and human services.
Voters did approve a referendum measure to freeze salaries of senior public officials during budget emergencies.
California has the biggest economy in the United States. If it were its own nation, its gross domestic product would be in the world's top ten.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
That would make too much sense for state politicians.
They might lose a vote, or something, if they did that.
There's a simple solution to the budget deficit.
Establish an annual re-licensing fee for marriage licenses, regardless of where originally taken out - and divide the projected deficit by the number of married couples in California.
For 2009, that would be $3,300 per license, approximately.
Those who do not wish to pay, or cannot, can allow the license on their marriage to lapse, and be unlicensed couples, a status already deemed sufficient for many couples in California since Prop 8 passed.
With each year's deficit charged back to the holders of marriage licenses, it would create a powerful social force encouraging people to get married and stay married - as couples nurture the relationships of friends who might otherwise divorce, and help unmarried friends find spouses, in order to spread the annual deficit as broadly as possible.
It might even convince conservative Christians that they can stand to share the contract of marriage with same-sex couples, since doing so would reduce every couple's re-licensing fee.
It would also encourage more thoughtfulness when voters consider spending measures on the ballot, discourage wasteful spending, and directly tie fiscal responsibility to the group of Californians who benefit the most from State services.
Deeper cuts & higher taxes on the poor and the middle class in California will only increase the budget deficit. That is because the American people are overly stretched now. They just have no more to give. That means companies will not be able to sell their services & goods. And if you cut critical services, deeper & more costly problems will increase tremendously. So the simple solution is to tax high income earners. If you fail to do this, high income earners will pay dearly anyway. If you do tax high income earners, you will get a small down payment from CEO’s & executives that have been taking advantage & abusing the American people. In the future, the American people will invest in much safer investments especially the 401k, 403b, etc. investors. We simply will not invest in companies that pay their executives and CEO’s high &, enormous out of balance salaries & bonuses.
'friend of jonathan' must be gay
page: 1
anonymusMay 20th, 2009 - 20:58:34
Maybe it is time for the state of California to switch to zero based (zero sum) budgeting. A reevaluation of all the public programs is required to operate under this kind of budget constraints. Just thinking....
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