This just in from State Senator (and soon to be Congressman) Jeff Denham…  Denham has submitted this ballot argument against the "Porkulus" (as we call it), the massive water bond that is currently scheduled to appear on the November ballot.  Advocates of the bond want to push the vote off to 2012 — presumably their internal polling shows that spending such vast amounts of money during a recession is not too popular with taxpayers…

Here what Denham submitted to the Secretary of State:

The politicians and the special interests are at it again!  Not only have they racked up a $19 billion deficit but now they are trying to con Californians into voting for a phony $11 billion water bond.
    Proposition 18 is a pork measure that gives billions of dollars to special interests and bureaucrats:
•    The Riverside Press-Enterprise said it contains: “a host of other items that have little to do with the state’s central water concerns. The state simply cannot afford such politically motivated handouts.”
•    Sacramento Bee Columnist Dan Walters observed: “There’s another $250 million(in Proposition 18) to partially pay for removing dams on the Klamath River that have nothing to do with California’s water supply — a benefit to PacifiCorp, the dams’ operator, which is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, Schwarzenegger’s old pal.”
•    San Jose Mercury-News asks: “why not just get them (legislators) to take out the pork and offer up a smarter, more basic plan that Californians might actually approve. . . ?”
The Legislature’s attorney admitted Proposition 18 is so poorly written that “…no amount of the $11,140,000,000 in bonds …would be required to be expended for a surface water storage facility…”
A so-called “water bond” that doesn’t even guarantee to build water facilities or increase water supply?  Those politicians, lobbyists and bureaucrats have no shame.  California’s bonded indebtedness is already at $73 billion!
Join family farmers, taxpayers, small business owners and other hardworking Californians by voting NO on Proposition 18 – the $11 billion boondoggle.

JEFF DENHAM
California Senator

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.