Late & Fake = Business As Usual…But “Reforms” and Tax Cuts = Permanent Problems and Perpetual Cuts

Late & Fake = Business As Usual…But “Reforms” and Tax Cuts = Permanent Problems and Perpetual Cuts

On September 23, the Governor signed a budget 85 days late and 9 billion short. It underfunds and undervalues our schools, healthcare and other vital services. Like most failed budgets of late, it’s full of gimmicks and borrowing and steals money from our future. Instead of real and permanent budget solutions, the people of California got real and permanent deficits.

Sound extreme? There’s more…permanent tax cuts for corporations AND permanent rules on spending that make it nearly impossible to restore the more than $14 billion in cuts the Governor and the Legislature made over the last three budgets. So that means one more thing would be permanent …the cuts.

Anyway you look at it, it’s a bad budget. But there’s still hope—voters get to decide on the spending rules in a special election next year. SEIU plans an aggressive campaign that will put our state on a sound fiscal path that honors the values of California’s working families.

The Budget Stabilization Fund and spending rules that go with it make it impossible to restore cuts made in bad budget years like this one. If it had been in effect for the last decade, according to the Department of Finance, in 2007-08 California would have had $8 billion less to spend on education, healthcare, and other vital services. How would the legislature have dealt with that additional hole this year?

With tough restrictions on the use of funds, we can expect that cutting will become a regular part of the budget process. The Governor’s new powers to make cuts will affect home care, healthcare, child care, and other important state services and the legislature will have no say over the matter.