Having lived in both states, I can see a lot of truth in this article. The excerpt below laid the blame on the public sector and the spend-spend-spend legislature:
In what respects, then, does California “excel”? California’s state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California’s public retirement funds. The “dues” paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.
None of this happens by accident. California’s interlocking directorate of government employee unions, issue activists, careerists and campaign contributors has become increasingly aggressive and adept at using rhetoric extolling public benefits for all to deliver targeted advantages to itself. As a result, the political reality of the high-benefit/high-tax model is that its public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good. Instead, the beneficiaries are the providers of the public services, and certain favored or connected constituencies, rather than the general population.
If, on the other hand, America’s taxpayers (and China’s bond buyers) succumb to bailout fatigue, California may reach the point at which, after every alternative has been exhausted, it is forced to try governing itself competently. You wouldn’t know it from putting up with California’s transportation and educational systems, but there actually is a principled, plausible argument to be made for the high-benefit/high-tax model. For the sake of both California and their own political ideals, its advocates ought to be leading the charge against every excess and inefficiency that deprives taxpayers of good value for their dollars. That won’t happen until they stand up to their coalition partners by breaking their Faustian political bargain with California’s self-serving governmental-industrial complex.
I fixed his “oops”. It won’t happen because no Democrat is going to give an inch on spending for public goods and services, much less admit they aren’t efficient; doing so not only opens them up to attacks from the right but also to attacks from their left. Any elected Democrat foolish enough to try an take the kind of action Mr. Voegeli is suggesting will find themselves in a primary fight, and any admission that the “tax and spend” system is flawed will simply hand the election to the next “cut and gut” Republican. The electorate is certainly not going to voluntarily end it’s dependence as long as the argument for the high-tax/high-benefit model remains plausible. When you add in the coalition of governmental unions and bureaucracy to the selfish “bread and circuses” voting and the lack of political honesty… it’s hard for me to get cynical enough to keep pace with California’s reality.
All underfunded and overused. There’s 85% of the budget right there. No Meg Whitman self serving bullshit here - the only way to get costs under control is to get people off their roles. That means you stop providing medical for the disabled, lock up less prisoners, and deny students education. Except the voters have passed initiatives driven roadblocks that say how you can and can’t do so.
I am not being obtuse here - this is exactly the Faustian decisions that every Republican governor has ‘claimed’ to be able to fix since Jerry Brown left.
Until the back is broken on this system of defined benefit. Your never going to balance a State budget.
When you have Prison Guards and their Union. Law Enforcement, Teachers, All state and county employees
on this public endless welfare system that pays people $ 100,000 a year till the day they die.
The system is broken. The rest of us live in a defined contribution world. And until California
and all of its employee`s do the same. Its never going to work.
Sorry to all the teachers and police on this board. But time to join the rest of us. Your screwed.
The goose that laid the golden egg has been roasted and stuffed.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget director is departing after nearly four years in one of the most influential posts in Sacramento.
“It feels like a good time for me to step back from the day-to-day fray of things,” budget czar Mike Genest said in an interview.
He said he plans to leave before the end of the year, whenever a replacement can be found.
As Schwarzenegger’s chief budget writer, Genest has overseen the paring back of California government as state revenues plunged amid the recession.
A veteran of Capitol budget wars, the GOP official developed a close rapport with Schwarzenegger. During the prolonged budget talks of 2009, Schwarzenegger would often try to lighten the mood by introducing Genest as a man on “suicide watch.”
“I always turned it around and said that once everyone saw what we were proposing that it went from suicide watch to homicide watch,” Genest said.
Red ink has plagued Sacramento during much of his tenure. There have been deep cuts to education and the slashing of social services for the needy and poor. The state passed temporary increases in the sales tax, income tax and vehicle license fees early this year. Still, stubborn deficits have persisted.
“We got through the recession so far,” he said. “There’s certainly more work to do.”
Despite the onslaught of bad fiscal news, Genest said he was proud his department hadn’t “flinched from the reality of the situation,” releasing up-to-date projections of the state’s budget woes no matter how bleak.
“I’ll miss him,” State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, said in an e-mail. “He’s been a great navigator and a great partner through the toughest budget struggles the state’s ever seen.”
Genest has been with the Schwarzenegger administration since its inception, joining first as chief deputy director of finance. He assumed the post of budget director in December 2005, the third person to hold that position under Schwarzenegger, following Donna Arduin and Tom Campbell, a former GOP congressman now running for governor.
Genest doesn’t have his next job lined up yet, he said, though he plans “to stay involved with public policy issues, because I care about the state.”
In moments like this, I’m reminded of the timeless words of that great philosopher Eric Cartmen:
You guys do know that California is currently 50th out of the 50 states in per pupil spending at the K-12 level? There are no extravagant pensions there; such are included in that figure.
Housing in Sacramento cheaper, cars are cheaper, airfare is cheaper ... but no ... can’t cut the expense money !!!
California Legislature tries to block steep cut in pay and perks
The attorney general is asked to determine whether an 18% pay reduction and car allowance cuts are illegal. Capitol managers say a citizens panel that decided the reductions exceeded its authority.
“Damn those uppity citizens, don’t they know who they are dealing with? We deserve a RAISE for all the hard work and long hours we’ve put in on balancing the budget.”
The amount of fraud, waste and abuse in the public sector is staggering, and the pension problem WILL ruin us. CalPERS is rife with mismanagement and cronyism, with zero accountability, yet we are on the hook for every bad decision and giveaway. Costa Mesa is in a very deep hole, that is getting deeper every day, yet we will be mandated to contribute more money we don’t have to cover CalPERS bad bets.
Lowest per capita K-12? How do you get that number? The largest part of our massive budget is education, where unions control everything and accountability is a bad word.
There have been some good articles on the mess, I’ll see if I can find them.
The amount of fraud, waste and abuse in the public sector is staggering
Whatever. Every GOP Governer over the last 30 years claimed the same thing. Funny, they never deliver and GOP lemmings like yourself continue to believe the lie.
, and the pension problem WILL ruin us. CalPERS is rife with mismanagement and cronyism, with zero accountability, yet we are on the hook for every bad decision and giveaway. Costa Mesa is in a very deep hole, that is getting deeper every day, yet we will be mandated to contribute more money we don’t have to cover CalPERS bad bets.
Lowest per capita K-12? How do you get that number?
I gotta call bullshit on that one too. We’re not last.
The largest part of our massive budget is education, where unions control everything and accountability is a bad word.
There have been some good articles on the mess, I’ll see if I can find them.
That would be a good start, since I don’t believe you have any facts to back up your argument. Look forward to seeing them.
The latest data I have seen is from Jan. 09 and places California at 47th in per pupil spending. The URL was so long, I just don’t want to cite it. Google “California per pupil spending” and you’ll find that the most recent budget moved us from 46th last year to 47th this year.
At the gathering, held in a plush conference room, one of the experts projected tables and graphs comparing various states. It was there that I had my own “AHA!” moment. The states with thriving educational systems were generally northern, predominately white, and with relatively few immigrants: the New England states, North Dakota, and Minnesota. That bore out the late Senator Patrick Moynihan’s quip that the strongest factor in predicting SAT scores was proximity to the Canadian border. The states grouped with California on the lower end of the bar graph were Deep South states like Mississippi and Alabama with a legacy of racism and with a relative absence of new-economy jobs; states like West Virginia that have relatively few jobs for college grads; and states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Hawaii that have huge numbers of non-English-speaking, downscale immigrants whose children are entering the schools. California clearly falls into the last group, suggesting that California’s poor performance since the 1960s may not have been due to an influx of bad teachers, or the rise of teachers’ unions, but to the growth of the state’s immigrant population after the 1965 federal legislation on immigration opened the gates.
In California, one in four students has to learn English in school, while the average in the United States is less than one in ten. Half of California students are eligible for free or reduced meals. Together, almost 60 percent of California’s school population is made up of Hispanics, many of them low-income, and African Americans—groups that generally have a much lower rate of student achievement than whites, Asians, and upper-income students. (One in three Latinos fails to graduate from high school.) And that affects how well schools do in the Department of Education’s measure of “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP). As the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports: “Fifty percent of elementary schools with the highest share of low-income students made AYP in 2007, whereas 98 percent of elementary schools with the lowest share of low-income students made AYP. This suggests that AYP reveals more about the type of students who attend a school than it does about the effectiveness of teachers and administrators at that school.”
CM has pounded me a couple of times why LAUSD is failing and IUSD isn’t even though LAUSD spends a bunch more money. I didn’t know then, but here’s the answer - IUSD’s students are more likely to speak English when they start school.
The amount of fraud, waste and abuse in the public sector is staggering
Whatever. Every GOP Governer over the last 30 years claimed the same thing. Funny, they never deliver and GOP lemmings like yourself continue to believe the lie.
, and the pension problem WILL ruin us. CalPERS is rife with mismanagement and cronyism, with zero accountability, yet we are on the hook for every bad decision and giveaway. Costa Mesa is in a very deep hole, that is getting deeper every day, yet we will be mandated to contribute more money we don’t have to cover CalPERS bad bets.
Lowest per capita K-12? How do you get that number?
I gotta call bullshit on that one too. We’re not last.
The largest part of our massive budget is education, where unions control everything and accountability is a bad word.
There have been some good articles on the mess, I’ll see if I can find them.
That would be a good start, since I don’t believe you have any facts to back up your argument. Look forward to seeing them.
Wow, no_vas, way to inject partisanship into the issue! I guess Belmont Learning Center was a paragon of fiscal responsibility? How about the unfolding CalPERS scandal? Perhaps you’d like to hold up the state prison health care system as an example of just why we “lemmings” (the public, who is sick and f-ing tired of watching our tone-deaf and wildly out of touch state government destroy our state) are wrong? This isn’t a partisan issue, this is a no-BS emergency. Arnold came into office pledging reform and ended up making things much, much worse. If you dispute that our governmental establishment (legislature, state government and public-sector unions) are not self-serving and wasteful, you really have let personal bias affect your impartiality. Yes, our initiative system has forced billions of dollars of non-discretionary funding down our throats, but our governmental establishment is not helping matters.
Actually, it isn’t a lie, recent news articles prove my point. The Sacramento Bee chronicles GSA procurement waste
I’ll find more up-to-date data when I have time, but the 2004 California Performance Review laid out a plan to save $32 billion over five years by eliminating duplicative bureaucracies, improving internal systems, stamping out fraud, and requiring performance-based budgeting. On fraud, the California Performance Review noted, “The Legislative Analyst’s Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion.”
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office stated the follwing about our prisons, “The average cost to incarcerate an inmate has more than doubled over the past 20 years from about $19,000 in 1988-89 to about $49,000 in 2008-09, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent.”
The Scaramento Bee recently documented waste and abuse in the State GSA: http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2281287.html
That is just one small, recent example. Lemming? C’mon, No_vas, you really can do much better than a reflexive dismissal.
I’ll find more up-to-date data when I have time, but the 2004 California Performance Review laid out a plan to save $32 billion over five years by eliminating duplicative bureaucracies, improving internal systems, stamping out fraud, and requiring performance-based budgeting. On fraud, the California Performance Review noted, “The Legislative Analyst’s Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion.”
$32b/5 years = $6.4 billion a year. That almost covers half of this years projected shortfall! From today:
On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) predicted that California’s budget deficit could grow by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The prediction comes on top of a $7.4 billion budget gap already projected for 2010-2011
And it’s not like they didn’t already hack out $26 billion dollars last year. And another $11 billion in 2007.
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office stated the follwing about our prisons, “The average cost to incarcerate an inmate has more than doubled over the past 20 years from about $19,000 in 1988-89 to about $49,000 in 2008-09, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent.”
At the same time, the average cost of incarcerating an inmate has more than doubled, rising from $19,500 in 1987-88 to $46,100 in 2007-08. One of the main reasons for this jump, according to the LAO, is the increase in inmate health care costs, which have risen by more than $1.5 billion since 2000, largely in response to a federal court order requiring the state to provide prisoners with a constitutionally acceptable level of care. Moreover, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) projects that the percentage of prisoners who are getting on in years will continue to rise sharply, a trend that would surely continue to drive up the state’s costs for inmate health care. CDCR projects that one-quarter (25.6 percent) of male inmates in California will be age 50 or older in 2018, compared to 13.2 percent in 2007 and just 3.9 percent back in 1988.
You can call it WFA if you like. I think it’s because we locked up a bunch of folks with manditory minimums in the 1980’s and “Three Strikes” in the 1990s and now those guys are getting old. The Democrats ran the Willie Horton ads, right?
The Scaramento Bee recently documented waste and abuse in the State GSA: http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2281287.html
That is just one small, recent example. Lemming? C’mon, No_vas, you really can do much better than a reflexive dismissal.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t take care of the WFA. I’m saying it doesn’t scratch the surface and the lip service builds up false hope because you can’t get it done with WFA alone. You need to do something radical like shut down the UC system or release 60,000 prisoners, assuming your plan is to get the budget in check via cuts.
The fact you believe the hype (and the math says it’s just not so) makes you a lemming. If you’d like to point out another $30 billion odd dollars in WFA, by all means do so. To me, it’s no wonder Genest is jumping off the train when he is. It’s easier than admit you’ve been wrong for the past 25 years.
Housing in Sacramento cheaper, cars are cheaper, airfare is cheaper ... but no ... can’t cut the expense money !!!
A bit OT: I was just in Sacramento looking a real estate last month. The place is a dump, every other house in the downtown area is for sale, for rent/lease, boarded up, or look like crap. Homeless villages under freeway overpass, neighborhood shops closed and boarded up.
Try Rancho Cordova, where people in Sacramento with some money fled to. The place looks better and is still cheap.
I’ll find more up-to-date data when I have time, but the 2004 California Performance Review laid out a plan to save $32 billion over five years by eliminating duplicative bureaucracies, improving internal systems, stamping out fraud, and requiring performance-based budgeting. On fraud, the California Performance Review noted, “The Legislative Analyst’s Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion.”
$32b/5 years = $6.4 billion a year. That almost covers half of this years projected shortfall! From today:
On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) predicted that California’s budget deficit could grow by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The prediction comes on top of a $7.4 billion budget gap already projected for 2010-2011
And it’s not like they didn’t already hack out $26 billion dollars last year. And another $11 billion in 2007.
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office stated the follwing about our prisons, “The average cost to incarcerate an inmate has more than doubled over the past 20 years from about $19,000 in 1988-89 to about $49,000 in 2008-09, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent.”
At the same time, the average cost of incarcerating an inmate has more than doubled, rising from $19,500 in 1987-88 to $46,100 in 2007-08. One of the main reasons for this jump, according to the LAO, is the increase in inmate health care costs, which have risen by more than $1.5 billion since 2000, largely in response to a federal court order requiring the state to provide prisoners with a constitutionally acceptable level of care. Moreover, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) projects that the percentage of prisoners who are getting on in years will continue to rise sharply, a trend that would surely continue to drive up the state’s costs for inmate health care. CDCR projects that one-quarter (25.6 percent) of male inmates in California will be age 50 or older in 2018, compared to 13.2 percent in 2007 and just 3.9 percent back in 1988.
You can call it WFA if you like. I think it’s because we locked up a bunch of folks with manditory minimums in the 1980’s and “Three Strikes” in the 1990s and now those guys are getting old. The Democrats ran the Willie Horton ads, right?
The Scaramento Bee recently documented waste and abuse in the State GSA: http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2281287.html
That is just one small, recent example. Lemming? C’mon, No_vas, you really can do much better than a reflexive dismissal.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t take care of the WFA. I’m saying it doesn’t scratch the surface and the lip service builds up false hope because you can’t get it done with WFA alone. You need to do something radical like shut down the UC system or release 60,000 prisoners, assuming your plan is to get the budget in check via cuts.
The fact you believe the hype (and the math says it’s just not so) makes you a lemming. If you’d like to point out another $30 billion odd dollars in WFA, by all means do so. To me, it’s no wonder Genest is jumping off the train when he is. It’s easier than admit you’ve been wrong for the past 25 years.
You’re right - not ALL WFA, but it is a significant factor. I’ll do more research when I’m not at work, but I also include bad programs in my description of waste and abuse. When Schwarzenegger came into office, we ran the state just fine on much, much less. Stating that we would have to shut UC or release 60,000 prisoners is pure, unadulterated hype. Spending on existing and expanded programs - whether mandated by the electorate or an out-of-control legislature - has increased dramatically over the last decade, and the state must find a way to cut those increases in order to remain viable. The only math that is relevant is revenue vs. expenditures.
Thanks for the links - I’ll either back up my assertions or shut up.
On the subject of waste, fraud and abuse, the State Auditor found that Dept. of Corrections spending has skyrocketed DESPITE a declining number of inmates:
State Auditor Slams Department of Corrections Spending. In a September 8 report, State Auditor Elaine Howle blasted the Department of Corrections for skyrocketing costs. The department’s budget increased nearly 32 percent, to $10 billion, from 2005 to 2008 even as the number of prison inmates declined.
The CA Taxpayers’ Association provides a detailed list of CA government waste, fraud and mismanagement in 2009, here is a link to some highlights:
In an Oct. 13, 2009 research report, Cal-Tax documented $600,000,000 in CA government waste in 2009 alone, and that is with fewer than half of identified accounts quantified:
“In 2009, the news media reported a shocking amount of waste, fraud and mismanagement in California’s state and local governments.
From the accounts that Cal-Tax could quantify, the total sum of identifiable waste, fraud or mismanagement amounted to almost $600 million in 2009. The actual
amount of waste, fraud or mismanagement is actually much greater – of the 112 accounts identified, only 49 accounts were able to be quantified.”
I’m looking for you to identify $40 billion in WFA. Line by line, cite by cite. With a total! Thx.
No_vas, I never said that, what I said was this:
The amount of fraud, waste and abuse in the public sector is staggering
Personally, and I’d think most people here would agree with me, I think $600,000,000 of documented waste, fraud or abuse (Cal-tax calls it mismanagement) is “staggering.” That $600,000,000 is the floor, the bare minimum, for January to October 2009 alone.
As for pensions and public retiree health benefits, the CA Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission issued a report in January 2008 with some truly staggering and alarming numbers:
A first-of-its-kind statewide survey identified at least $118 billion in unfunded retiree health (also known as OPEB) liabilities, as self-reported by state and local governments in California, and an unfunded pension liability for all public systems of $63.5 billion.
Talk about public sector abuse! Guess who gets to pick up that $181.5 BILLION tab? We do.
“I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy,” said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. “I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.”
There were no bankruptcy options, and the legislature chose to cut back sharply on education and health care to fill the gap. Mr. Genest already predicts the 2011 shortfall will outpace the projected $7 billion gap. It is a smaller deficit than this year’s gap, but the choices will be more difficult because so many cuts have already been made.
Mr. Genest estimated that, eventually, 40% of the state’s budget would go to the state Medicaid program, 40% to education, 10% to debt service and 6% to retiree medical services and pension—leaving little left for anything else, such as the state’s corrections system.
Politically, this is your guy on your side. Not my side. Not my boy. Is it still unadulterated hype? I apologize for the somewhat personal nature of my comments (the whole lemming thing), but you are ignoring the facts that your guys from your side of the isle are presenting. You know, the guy from your side who is leaving the sinking ship.
California faces a projected deficit of $21 billionThe legislative budget analyst’s projection, to be released Wednesday, threatens to send Sacramento back into gridlock and force across-the-board cuts to state programs.
Reporting from Sacramento - Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the state’s chief budget analyst.
The new figure—the nonpartisan analyst’s first projection for the coming budget year—threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs.
The grim forecast, described by people who were briefed on the report by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, comes courtesy of California’s recession-wracked economy, unrealistic budgeting assumptions, spending cuts tied up in the courts and disappearing federal stimulus funds.
“Economic recovery will not take away the very severe budget problems for this year, next year and the year after,” said Steve Levy, director of the Center For Continuing Study of the California Economy.
In fact, after two years of precipitous revenue declines, the new report will project relatively stable tax collections for the state, said those who were briefed. But that won’t stop the deficit from climbing to nearly $21 billion.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will present his next proposed budget to Californians in January as he begins his last year in office, started sounding the alarm last week.
“I think that there will be across-the-board cuts again,” he said at a San Jose news conference.
The task in 2010 could be even harder than it was this year, when record deficits and cash shortfalls drove California to issue IOUs for only the second time since the Great Depression. Lawmakers have already made billions in deep cuts to education, healthcare and social services while temporarily hiking income, sales and vehicle taxes.
“I can’t think of any good solutions,” said Assemblywoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), who chairs the budget committee. Although the projected deficit would be smaller than the last one, she said, “the cuts are going to be harder to make because we’ve already made such substantial cuts.”
The current budget year accounts for $6.3 billion of the deficit, the nonpartisan analyst will project. Prisons spending will outstrip what has been budgeted by more than $1 billion, and K-12 schools were underpaid by $1 billion under the complex formula that governs education funding, the report will say.
Another $14.4 billion of the deficit is for the fiscal year that begins next summer, say those briefed on the report. The governor’s next budget will have to account for both years.
We need to kick the WFA savings up to roughly 55 billion. Get a crackin’.
We need to kick the WFA savings up to roughly 55 billion. Get a crackin’.
I gave you a pass last time, but you’ve stuck with it so… show me where anyone, anywhere, at anytime, has said that eliminating WFA could close the budget gap. You can’t because no one has. Not on this board, not in the California government, not anywhere in the country has anyone claimed that WFA could close California’s budget gap. So either take your strawman back to the cornfield or put up some links.
We need to kick the WFA savings up to roughly 55 billion. Get a crackin’.
I gave you a pass last time, but you’ve stuck with it so… show me where anyone, anywhere, at anytime, has said that eliminating WFA could close the budget gap. You can’t because no one has. Not on this board, not in the California government, not anywhere in the country has anyone claimed that WFA could close California’s budget gap. So either take your strawman back to the cornfield or put up some links.
Sure. Lets start with Meg Whitman, current candidate for CA Governer, and her batch of radio ads. If she’s not talking about WFA, what is she talking about?
The Republican candidate for California governor peddles two falsehoods about state spending and taxing in the very first radio ads for the 2010 race.
We instinctively grant latitude to advertisers, whether they’re peddling politicians, dog food or miracle paring knives. But we do expect that an ad will not flat-out lie.
Sadly, our expectations often fall short when ambitious politicians are pitching themselves.
Neither major party has a lock on truthfulness. I’ve written about false advertising by Republicans and Democrats alike for years.
Now, in the very first series of radio ads in the 2010 gubernatorial race, comes blatant baloney from billionaire political novice Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of EBay who is running for the Republican nomination.
“Did you know,” Whitman asks radio listeners, “that in the last 10 years, state spending has gone up 80%?”
Well, no, I did not know that. So I did some checking.
“They’re completely wrong when they say that,” replied state Finance Director Mike Genest, a conservative former budget consultant for Senate Republicans.
It doesn’t take much digging to learn that general fund spending “in the last 10 years” has risen just 27%, according to finance department data. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, spending actually has decreased by 16.6%.
Lying about the growth of size of government, confirmed by “Rat abandloning a Sinking Ship” Genest. But she’s not done:
But this has ventured too deeply into thick weeds. Let’s move on to another bit of baloney in the Whitman ad that is running all over the state.
“These days,” the candidate intones, “Sacramento does the same old thing over and over. Their only solution is to raise taxes and spend more money.”
I’ve already showed that they’re spending less money, not more.
In fact, over the current and last fiscal years, projected spending—the amount that would have been paid out without changes in laws—has been whacked by $31 billion. So their “only solution” is not to tax and spend.
So - there is the meme. Sacto is wasteful. Spending is out of control. Your taxes are too high. She never mentions getting rid of programs (like the current prision system, as suggested by Genest) so what else is someone who is reasonable to assume she is talking about? The current crew managed to hack out $31 billion - plus another 20 odd they announced today. What does she have in mind? Pixie dust?
And then there’s the current Governor, six years ago:
Schwarzenegger told the large crowd of journalists that he’s still researching many issues, including the budget. He said he will order a complete audit of California’s budget to “go line-by-line” looking for waste.
“We don’t really know what the current operating deficit it is,” Schwarzenegger said. He explained that estimates of the budget’s deficit have ranged during the campaign from $6 billion to $10 billion.
Hello, this is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with another California Report.
I want to talk to you today about what we are doing here in Sacramento to live within our means. And we all know this is very important.
One of the most exciting developments is the new Waste Watchers hotline and website, which is helping us to root out waste, fraud and abuse in state government.
Waste Watchers allows you to hold government accountable, by anonymously reporting state practices that just don’t add up.
We launched “Waste Watchers” just last month.
And let me tell you something, we have been hearing from everyone… from the public… and from our state employees who are on the frontlines, seeing inefficiencies and abuse first hand.
We’ve already had nearly 2,500 comments, suggestions and complaints.
We’ve heard amazing stories, so let just me give you some examples here:
We received for instance a report that a brand new $111,000 medical device has been collecting dust.
It had been warehoused at a state hospital because it wasn’t needed. Imagine that. So we quickly transferred it to another hospital, where it can be put to good use.
Is this what you had in mind, or did you want something else more?
We need to kick the WFA savings up to roughly 55 billion. Get a crackin’.
I gave you a pass last time, but you’ve stuck with it so… show me where anyone, anywhere, at anytime, has said that eliminating WFA could close the budget gap. You can’t because no one has. Not on this board, not in the California government, not anywhere in the country has anyone claimed that WFA could close California’s budget gap. So either take your strawman back to the cornfield or put up some links.
Is this what you had in mind, or did you want something else more?
I’ll settle for either a) an admission that you don’t really have a link where anyone claims that the entire $55 Billion deficit (or even the $40 billion you claimed a few days ago) could be closed by eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse or b) an actual link to someone claiming that. What you have offered isn’t either of those, can’t support your initial claim, and isn’t even addressing your contention. In fact, one could infer from all your dancing around the accusation that you can’t support that you actually prefer to continue funding WFA rather than make any attempt to eliminate it at all, and thereby preventing a reduction in government.
