Excerpted from comments by three conservative state lawmakers.
I am sorry to interrupt the chorus of self-congratulation, but I feel compelled to state an obvious fact,that this budget is $6 billion out of balance; that the state’s chronic deficit spending is getting worse, not better; and that the growth of general fund spending is growing and not shrinking.
Nor can I join applauding the “painstaking negotiations” that have produced this document.
The fact is, in May the governor proposed spending $88 billion (general fund), the Democrats countered at $89 billion, and they have now compromised at $90 billion. I suppose it is a blessing that the negotiations didn’t go on any longer.
Let me repeat: This budget spends $6 billion more than we take in. Last year we spent $2 billion more than we took in. That means that this year’s operating deficit is three times bigger than last year’s.
If there is so much as a hiccup in the economy, this state will be plunged into a financial crisis that will make 2003 look like the good old days.
There is, however, one good thing that this budget accomplishes. It makes it absolutely imperative that we restore to the governor the authority that he held from 1939 until 1983 to make mid-year spending reductions without having to return to the Legislature.
, Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks
It may have been as good a deal as the governor could get with this spendthrift legislature and there are no tax increases, but it just spends too much money to earn my vote.
The Deficit Prevention Act that I have been promoting would limit the annual growth in state spending to the combined increase in population and inflation for that year. This year, that would have allowed a spending increase of a healthy 4%. Because of robust economic growth, revenues actually increased by about 6%. Under my proposal, that additional 2% of revenue would be used to improve the state’s fiscal condition by setting up a reserve and paying down some of our enormous debt.
But this budget increases general fund spending by over 10%. That’s over 2.5 times the growth rate of population and inflation. As a result, next year’s deficit starts out at about $4.5 billion.
,Sen. John Campbell, R-Irvine
I voted in favor of passing the budget.
In the Assembly, the vote was 63-13 for passage. Of the 13 members who voted “No,” all were Republicans, while 19 Republicans voted to support Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget.
Some in the GOP may criticize this budget as too large. I agree. However, given that Republicans in Sacramento barely have more than one-third of the members of either house, the question needs to be asked, could we have done better?
The budget has no new taxes. The budget sticks closely to the governor’s proposal for education spending, rejecting the California Teachers Association union and Democrats’ calls to add another $3.1 billion of spending on top of the $3.1 billion increase proposed by the governor.
The budget for the first time fully funds Prop. 42 road construction spending at $1.3 billion. The budget pays back a year early the full $1.2 billion the state took from local government in recent years.
Most importantly, the budget will be almost $1.7 billion more in balance next year than the budget last proposed by the Democrats,a budget I voted against.
The real solution to solving our spending problems is to elect more Republicans. The only way we can do that is to support the redistricting initiative and the paycheck protection initiative during this November’s special election.
That, and the extra budget-cutting powers contained in the governor’s “Live Within Your Means” initiative will reshape the budget landscape and allow us to begin retiring some of that mountain of debt built up from the overspending of the Gov. Davis years.
,Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine
