Dems want to tax, borrow, avoid cuts
May 26, 2010 Filed in: Budget & Finance
| Unions
Column: Dan Walters, The Orange County
Register The California
Legislature's Democratic
leaders, after months of hoping against hope that the state budget
deficit would magically disappear, have finally returned to their
ideological roots, proposing new taxes and new borrowing to avoid
deep spending cuts. Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's no-new-taxes budget would eliminate
welfare grants, hit K-12 education and slash deeply into the
remainder of the social services and health safety net for millions
of poor Californians – anathema to the Legislature's liberals.
However, the nearly $5 billion in temporary new taxes proposed by
Democratic senators and the more than $9 billion in one-time
borrowing favored by Democratic Assembly members, absent some
economic miracle, would, as Schwarzenegger often says, merely "kick
the can down the road."