California Governor outlines new budget austerity program

[Hannah Bell]

Schwarzenegger’s plans involve, in his own words, “absolutely terrible cuts” to vulnerable sections of the poor and working class.

-- the complete elimination of the state’s Welfare to Work program, which provides monthly payments of $694 to unemployed individuals who participate in job training programs.

In addition to the $1.1 billion to be gained through the elimination of CalWorks, Schwarzenegger hopes to make reductions in the following areas:

* $750 million in cuts to In Home Support Services program (funding to allow poorer residents to take care of disabled family members.)

* $532 million from Medi-Cal (health care assistance to the unemployed and indigent.)

* $602 million from Food Stamps.

* 60% cuts to state-provided mental health programs.

* $15 million from the Healthy Families (medical assistance to nearly 700,000 thousand children from low-income families).

* $1.2 billion from the state’s prison system (cuts in inmate health care and shifting a portion of the state inmate population to county jails, i.e. making localities pay).

* five percent reduction in state payrolls, five percent increases in pension contributions....one-day-per-month furlough, raising the overall effective pay cut for state workers to approximately 20 percent.

* A funding freeze on public education including for K-12, community colleges and universities system.

...the Governor’s budget proposals include no meaningful sources of revenue except for the increased enforcement of traffic violation penalties, along with plans to modernize and increase participation in the state’s lottery system..

Schwarzenegger has made it clear that whatever new revenues are to be gained through these mechanisms will not be used to restore funding to social programs but instead will be placed into a “rainy day” fund.

What the imposition of a rainy day fund represents, therefore, is an attempt to establish the permanence of budget cuts and austerity (Hannah: also a source of ongoing "rents" for the finance sector, as the $$ will be "invested" with these already bloated bloodsuckers)

Question: “Governor, you said you would be seeking additional cuts in Health and Human Services. And I’m wondering, how do you justify that when the economy is not doing well and the demand for government programs is going up?”


Schwarzenegger replied: “Well, I think that you said it. Because the economy is not doing well and because we have a broken budget system we don’t have more money. We have to live within our means. That’s what I need to do in my business, that’s what I need to do in my family We have to live within our means.”


For Schwarzenegger, living within his means apparently involves commuting to work every morning in his own private jet.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/cali-m17.shtml

[marmar]

1. In other words, if you're poor or elderly, drop dead.....quickly.

nt

[Hannah Bell]

2. Yep. Seriously. It's absolutely shocking.

[Catshrink]

3. Maybe it will take this to overturn Prop. 13

It won't happen right away - it might take a couple of years for the damage to sink in. I wonder how the anti-tax people will react to the devastation. Maybe the shine will finally come off Grover Norquist.

Rebuilding will be expensive.

[David in Canada]

4. Sadly, you're correct!

It will probably take the horrors of these cuts to the (already meagre) standard of living of the poor, disabled and otherwise downtrodden before people realise that the free market is little more than an illusion and the mantra of the likes of Grover Norquist, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand recognised to be as real as Santa Claus and Peter Pan.

Republicans are the kind of people that know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They fail to grasp the benefit of collective action through taxes and how certain actions, such as single payer universal health care, results in less costs to nearly everyone when the responsibility for paying for it is spread to everyone.

Of course, until that day comes, I shudder at the suffering and sheer torment the less fortunate living in California are going to endure at the altar of lies and selfishness constructed by the free market fundamentalists.

[Starry Messenger]

5. Yeah, we're pretty fucked out here.

That 9 billion from Enron could have gone a long way.

[glitch]

6. AND the $2 Billion in NEW corporate tax breaks and the refusal to tax oil extraction.

Also a part of Arnold's budget.

Shock Doctrine, Homeland Style.