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The Public Policy
Please — Don’t Shoot!
To Democrat dismay, Jerry Brown has become trigger happy.
Most state constitutions require an annual balanced budget. In California this has been honored in the breech for some time. In recent years, it has often been September by the time the legislature cobbled one together (despite the fact it was required by June 30). Last year, the voters decreed that the legislators would not be paid after the deadline date if they hadn’t produced said balanced budget. They missed it by about a week. (Fortunately, they don’t get paid retroactively for the lost days.) The bad news was, they achieved the goal that is a budget dependent on 40 percent wishful thinking (that is, $4 billion in new revenue) and 60 percent on accounting sleight-of-hand tricks.
The problem with the former is that wishes aren’t dollars. Already, new funds are coming in at an annual rate about $600 million short of the target. As for the sleight-of-hand accounting, this year as in recent ones it involves shifting funds from one place to another and they must be replenished on a short timetable. In effect, this has resulted in the legislature coming up with two budgets every year: the first (and fake) one, and the second a few months later which should be geared to reality but is actually about as realistic as the old stage trick of sawing a woman in half in a box.
The wishful thinking was for about $4 billion in new revenue from an economic “recovery” about as fanciful as Obama’s of last year. If the revenue shortfall continues a fearsome aspect of this year’s budget will become a reality: mandated budget cuts.
To “sell” the budget, the legislature agreed to certain automatic cuts if, after six months, the budget is not balanced. Without new revenue, the chance of accounting tricks doing the job evaporates. The State Controller’s office will pretty much know in October how the year will turn out.
Before the heavily Democratic legislature completed its current session, its leaders pleaded with Governor Jerry Brown to ease up on the “triggers” for the budget cuts. No dice, he said, adding that to do so would reduce the confidence of investors in California. It was hard enough getting the banks to buy the “revenue anticipation” bonds based on the state’s wishful thinking. No, Jerry Brown hasn’t become a Republican. He can read polls and he knows that Californians are getting fed up with their dysfunctional state government.
What a dilemma. There is nothing a Democrat likes less than to tell constituents whose votes he has bought by passing their pet legislation that they will have to do with less. The howls will be long and loud. Demonstrations will surround the state capitol, keening about the cruelty of the legislators. Some bureaucrats will be terminated. Some lobbyists will remind their Democrat beneficiaries that their largess will be a lot less large next year.
O tempora! O mores! O thank goodness for tough times in Sacramento.
About the Author
Peter Hannaford was closely associated for a number of years with the late President Reagan, beginning in the California Governor’s office. His latest book is Presidential Retreats.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
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Pecos Pete| 9.26.11 @ 7:30AM
Where Greece goes California will follow. And King O will try to bail them both out with Monopoly money.
shamus| 9.26.11 @ 7:15PM
They say California leads the nation.
oldfart| 9.26.11 @ 7:38AM
Cluck - cluck - cluck - the chickens are coming home to roost. One plus one can only equal three for a limited amount of time. Even in the fog that is the liberal financial brain. Perhaps the Northern Counties of California will pick up where the left off when Pearl Harbor was attacked, succeed from California and form a new, fiscally responsible, State of Jefferson.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 9.26.11 @ 7:59AM
This has to be Bush's fault!! It couldn't be that Liberal policies just suck, and that they inevitably lead to bankruptcy, could it? Nah!! They're great ideas, it's just that they haven't spent enough money yet!! Yeah, that's it!! Spend more, tax more, waste more, give away more, regulate more, and then just wait and watch the revenue flow in!! California dreamin'!!
Get out of California now, before it's too late!!
RJ| 9.26.11 @ 10:20AM
Shortly after last November's election (California went in the opposite direction from much of the nation; we went more democrat), columnist Steve Greenhut said that Californians will now see the sharks (tax consuming interest groups) eating each other because the state can no longer hide its inability to pay their spending demands. How right he was. Now there are fights between interest groups over the dead fiscal carcass of California, wherein some of them will have to lose.
You may have also heard that recently it was discovered that a treasurer for many Democratic office-holders, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, looted their campaign bank accounts. My guess is that this will turn into taxpayer funded campaign contributions. Senator Feinstein has decided to sue the bank claiming that it should have known that her treasurer was mishandling the money (even though Feinstein, who is much more aware of her campaign account activities didn't see anything wrong). In these days of crony "capitalism" and government dependent banks, I except the bank will pay Feinstein's claim as well as the other Democratic office-holders subsequent claims and in some way more money from the government will find its way to the bank to make up the difference. Who knows, maybe the bank will also give additional money to the Democrats for their "emotional distress." Obama's gang has brought new meaning to "the victor goes the spoils." The "Chicago Way" lives on.
Ed McCabe | 9.26.11 @ 11:33AM
Breech is defined as: The lower rear portion of the human trunk; the buttocks.
That may be what the writer had in mind, although "breach" - a violation or infraction, as of a law, a legal obligation, or a promise - would seem a more likely choice in context.
Clarification, please.
c. j. acworth| 9.26.11 @ 4:42PM
Ed;
I noticed that as well. What I finally decided is that the California legislature has been "mooning" the people for years. Perhaps they are about to get their butts kicked!
cowgirl| 9.26.11 @ 12:52PM
California - The bastion of failed liberal mental illness.
Whenever someone extolls the beauty of liberalism all I do is say really? Then how come California is such a failed state?
LarryK| 9.26.11 @ 1:35PM
Wow.
MOS 1 1 2 | 9.26.11 @ 6:35PM
O tempora! O mores! Methinks thou dost display a classical education! Like me, you must be of a certain age.
Gayle| 9.26.11 @ 7:12PM
Big smile! A certain age, and abnormally fond of Shakespeare being quoted correctly. Sometimes, one simply must step into the breach.
Shamus| 9.26.11 @ 7:17PM
Once more into the breeches.
Skippy| 9.27.11 @ 5:19PM
Breeches?
BREECHES?
We don' need no steenkeen' breeches!
gary siebel| 9.26.11 @ 10:03PM
I think you (plural) are both misrepresenting and misunderstanding the politics in California. What Guv Jerry is doing will eventually force the Dems there to actually FIGHT, instead of being the wimp-asses expecting free-handouts that they have become. The troglodytic and intransigent Repubs will be wiped from the map if the Dems FIGHT instead of whimper and beg. The Repubs are outnumbered there even more than liberal Dems are in Texas.
Of course, liberal Dems, as in Berkeley, only bring out the knives when their property values are threatened. To them, a FIGHT is unkind words spoken in harsh tones. LOL.
POST American| 9.26.11 @ 11:52PM
----Great '70's Show' naus--talgia.
NOW, back to the finishing off Globalist
RED China TREASON OP ----and the greatest
world nuclear disaster (---and DEPOP OP), in
history ---the flawed GE Mox reactor sourced,
HAARP-eque ---FUKISHIMA---
Chef Schnauzer| 9.27.11 @ 6:11AM
I started and have grown my business in this Bankster / Obama depression - a depression with no clear ending. I am disgusted that state government losers(and federal government losers) can't see the train barreling down upon them and step outside the train tracks. What other conclusion is available to the observer than the Banksters and Government losers WANT the mobs to rise up and rip them to shreds. I'm happy to hold open the door for these two parasitic and now evil groups to feel consequences of their own actions.
POST American| 9.28.11 @ 5:45AM
---------BTW
Spread the word, word itself is swiftly
spreading about the vaccines and EUGENICS
agenda connection.
The push is on the make injections
MANDATORY.
Romney's crowd has been moving to
make them required in Massachusetts,
with a 1000 dollar a day fine for resisters
And California is pushing injections via
door to door shoot ups of children,
and threatening to exclude kids who don't
----REMEMBER----
Cancer and leukemia LIVE viruses
are NOW admitted to have been a prime
feature of the shots of the 50's/ 60's and
70's.
Big Farma IS controlled not just by biz-nihilist
Globalists ---but full-blown genocidal EUGENISTS
Virtually ALLL vaccines themselves are now
being manufactured in the capital of world
genocide --RED China
Many of these vaccines are sourced in the
dead tissue of the exterminated unborn
And remember, the 'caring folks' in our
EUGENIST medical establishment, not only
REFUSED to push for universal testing during
the heyday of the AIDS epidemic ------BUT
the evidence now more than suggests, AIDS
itself was sourced from smallpox shots
given by the UN in Haiti. Likewise the Spanish
Flu of 1918 that exterminated, in good EUGENIST fashion, 40 MILLION worldwide.
AGAIN, smallpox shots of soldiers near the
end of WWI.
Further, take deep note, there's not a
word of warning from our Rock--F--L--O
EUGENICS establishment about the now
saturation levels of fallout from FUKISHIMA.
------WHAT more do we need to know?
-----------HUAC meets NUREMBERG 2012---------