This is just in from State Senator Mark Wyland on the California budget impasse. It is definately worth reading — it just makes a lot of sense!
My fellow Republican Senators have explained in columns on the Flashreport why we have resisted voting for the state budget which is several weeks overdue. The budget passed by the Assembly contains a projected deficit for next year in the $5-6 billion dollar range. How can we pass a budget with a deficit in a state that mandates a balanced budget? We can’t – both in the short term and the long term.
In the past, budgets have included various gimmicks like moving payments from one fiscal year to the next, borrowing from dedicated funds such as the highway fund, and using borrowed money to pay off the $15 billion “Davis Deficit.” These gimmicks are costly and can’t continue forever.
Calls for increasing the car tax, the fee you pay to renew your vehicle registrations, have already begun, and there will be more efforts to raise taxes. Democrats know very well that the projected $5-6 billion deficit for next year is real. They know that spending has increased so much, at such a fast rate, that there is no way revenue from taxpayers will keep up without raising taxes or reducing spending.
The results of unbalanced budgets are demands to raise taxes to spend even more, and less of what taxpayers want and deserve, like better freeways. Unfortunately, the liberal Democrats who control the legislature are so committed to more “programs” that they will always want to spend more to “solve” California’s “problems”.
Take transportation, for example. Liberal Democrats believe that public transportation is the solution to clogged freeways. Buses, rail-lines, and forced car pooling, however, do not provide the kind of relief hoped for and are a bottomless pit of spending. Californians, in contrast, want more and better roads and freeways.
Take another example from the spending reforms Republicans have proposed as part of the budget. California will be fined $150 million if it fails to conform to federal welfare requirements. Forty eight states have already complied with the federal requirements and the Republican proposal to conform our rules will save over $300 million.
Furthermore, our education system consumes almost half of our budget, yet we have a high school dropout rate of almost one third—almost 50% among minority groups. The drop-out rate imperils our future as a state because too few California students are able to earn a good living and contribute to our state by buying homes and paying taxes.
One of the systemic problems of our creating a balanced budget is the huge amounts of time legislators spend digesting over 2,000 pieces of legislation. Instead of being mired in a bill factory, we need to devote most of our time making sure government works well and spends wisely. Instead of doing things like considering the environmental impact of incandescent light bulbs (a bill introduced this year) we should be thinking about collecting the least amount of taxpayer dollars and getting the most for those dollars.
Republican Senators, while grateful to our Assembly colleagues for the work they did in reducing the budget deficit dramatically, are calling for more spending reductions because we know this year “sets the stage” for addressing an even bigger problem next year. The cure is simple: review spending constantly, reduce or eliminate ineffective programs, reduce taxes where possible, and give more of what already burdened taxpayers really need and want.
