California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will seek “terrible cuts” to eliminate an $18.6 billion budget deficit facing the most-populous U.S. state through June 2011, his spokesman said.
Schwarzenegger, 62, who will introduce his revised budget plans on May 14, has said he won’t seek tax increases to bolster California’s finances. The Republican’s forecast for the budget gap may rise after revenue fell short of his targets last month.
“We can’t get through this deficit without very terrible cuts,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear told reporters in Sacramento. “We don’t believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do.”
California’s revenue in April, when income-tax payments are due, trailed the governor’s estimates by $3.6 billion, or 26 percent. The gap wiped out gains from the previous four months, leaving collections $1.3 billion behind projections for the budget year that ends in June.
Schwarzenegger’s newest plan will revise the proposals introduced in January to account for the tax-collection shortages. In January, the governor said California may have to eliminate entire welfare programs, including the main one that provides cash and job assistance to families below the poverty line, without an influx of cash from the federal government.
Since then, the Democrat-controlled Legislature has made few strides toward closing the budget hole. Legislation adopted during the emergency session ordered by Schwarzenegger knocked about $1.4 billion from the deficit.
(Read More: Bloomberg.com)
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9 Responses
I guess it took him long enough to realize spending like a drunken liberal is NOT the way to go.
Will there be riots, a-la-Greece, when the Government cuts off the “bread and circuses?”
1. If there has been an economic recovery in effect for the last year, this shouldn’t be happening – suggesting the recovery is a “sham” based on oodles of printed money.
2. When you make funky budget estimates, don’t rely on them.
3. California (and New York) could just bounce checks, and probably could lower wages and pensions. These aren’t real contracts, but rather grants by the legislature. Then again, what’s wrong with issuing “scrip” (collectors love them, they have a long tradition, and if you issue enough of them people can use them for cooking).
Mark Levin,
Or a drunken conservative. California spends more then ten billion dollars a year on its prisons.
akuperma,
Ask your bank if it accepts scrip for your mortgage payment. You will probably be told that you will be foreclosed on.
It figures a liberal would want spending, to be cut by emptying the prisons and letting all the thugs and other criminals out to prey on the innocent law abiding citizens.
“California may have to eliminate entire welfare programs, including the main one that provides cash and job assistance to families below the poverty line, without an influx of cash from the federal government.”
And if they get that influx of cash from the Feds, that will just mean taxes accross the country must go up to pay for it.
So in essence Schwarzenegger is saying “Don’t rasie taxes on Californians (alone), raise them on everyone to bail us out”.
How many of those “families below the poverty line” are in this country, illegally?
“emptying the prisons and letting all the thugs and other criminals out to prey on the innocent law abiding citizens”–(NO. 5)
Look, I have to agree with Charlie Hall that 90% of the prisons should be closed, saving billions of dollars.
Most of the prople there are small-time criminals, who should simply pay a fine. Serious criminals should be executed, rather than warehoused.
The “White Collar” criminals, like Rubashkin, who have violated technical rules and who are no threat to anyone, should never go to prison. They should simply pay the appropriate fine.
#8 – You have my vote.