Last week, not much work done in the Assembly, both Monday and Thursday floor sessions canceled. Committees did meet and more needed, quality legislation…cough…was sent on its merry way to its next committee. Budget talks started to de-ice though not enough to make it happen substantively last week.
With the apparent progress on removing of budget $ going to health care benefits for the children of illegal immigrants [another reward for those that break and enter our sovereign nation’s ‘property line’], we can hope for the budget to start to wrap with the constitutional deadline of the 15th long gone, perhaps the ‘fiscal deadline’ of the 30th can be met…as long as Republican principles are met in this process. These were stated very well by Jennifer Nelson in her Budget Priority post previously on the 21st:
-Drop this new inappropriate expansion of government of illegal immy health benefits from this budget proposal
-Pay down debt with this one-time windfall ‘surplus’ money, [first, in my opinion, preferably to repay $ filched from the voter passed Prop 42 Trans fund…eliminate debt ‘right now’ and get $ into highway work ‘right now’], not play games with hiding the windfall $ in rainy day accounts. [can you imagine? the first puffy cloud in the sky will be a ‘rainy day’ around here]
-Restore the funding back to what the fundamental role of government is and should be, public safety, the approx. $150M that got whacked in that partisan vote of last minute Christmas-eve wish list spending that came out of the only 6 member budget conference committee.
George is working to make these things happen for our caucus and doing well in this role as Leader. The talks do seem cordial and hey, why not come to agreement today and get it out
Wednesday? No, not a budget-completion prediction by me. I haven’t made any July vacation plans since I’ve been in this place and haven’t used my Brickyard 400 tix for early August lately either…good seats…call me.