Governor Schwarzenegger this morning announced that instead of waiting until after the results of the May 19th Special Election to issue his required proposed May Revisions to the State Budget, that instead he will go ahead and issue his proposals later this week — in fact, he will offer two different proposals, one in the unlikely event that the May ballot propositions pass, and one for the more likely outcome that those ballot propositions will fail.
The Governor, never one to admit defeat until the body is cold, is apparently not done with the last minute efforts to try and bully the public into voting for his ballot propositions by painting for them some sort of draconian picture of where the state will be if they have to trim an additional $6 billion of costs because of the failures of 1C, 1D, and 1E.
Have you ever heard of the Washington Monument theory? As the story goes, every time someone says that the National Park Service needs to cut back some of their costs, the Director immediately puts forward a lists of cuts, at the top of which is to close the Washington Monument. The reason, of course, it to provide an outcry from the public who want to see a leaner government, but not at the expense of closing one of America’s landmark destinations. Of course, the Park Service Director chuckles to the bank since he didn’t put up the real cuts that made sense.
We’ll be looking at the Governor’s cuts. Will he propose something akin to the Washington Monument Theory? Or will he propose the kinds of solutions that will get us through this mess on the short term, and long term?