Selected Recent California Newspaper Editorials
- May
- 15
7:16 pm Live Window
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a chance to change California’s course significantly. Or, he can continue on the current disastrous path of more taxing, spending and borrowing in order to spend. We hope for a change, but experience tells us we’re probably in for more of the same.
We expect the governor to be unspectacularly predictable Wednesday when he unveils his revised budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year. Facing what he estimated earlier this year to be a $20 billion deficit on a $101 billion budget, he still probably will give us more of what he has given us before.
It’s likely Mr. Schwarzenegger will propose shifting money from the fattest government programs to merely fat government programs. He will call for taxes by calling them something else, like “fees.” He probably will urge more borrowing, even though the state will begin 200809 with $25 billion in budget-related debt, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Although he’s called for 10-percent across-the-board cuts, that’s a thin slice of bloated total spending that has increased 39 percent since 2004. Nevertheless, even these cursory cuts will evoke painful howling from constituencies, sounding more like multiple amputations rather than the flesh wounds they are.
Tags: amp, amputations, arnold schwarzenegger, budget, constituencies, day, fiscal year, flesh wounds, government programs, legislative analyst, money, newspaper editorials, thin sliceRelated posts
