Transcript over the flip.
Hello, this is Assembly Speaker Karen Bass.
This week the Budget Conference Committee of the Assembly and Senate produced a plan that solves California’s deficit responsibly and still leaves a healthy reserve in place.
The Assembly and Senate will vote on that plan next week.
Our plan is the balanced approach Californians want: Real cuts, limited new revenues and other solutions that help ward off a cash crisis later this summer.
We have accepted the Governor’s realistic proposals to solve the deficit.
But in standing up for California families, we have rejected his over-the-top proposals for eliminating the safety net in California – which would have made California the only government in the first-world without one.
We rejected the Governor’s attempt to squeeze nearly $700 million more from our schools when they have already been cut more than their fair share.
And we rejected his proposal to take Cal Grant scholarships out of the hands of students from hard working families who had already been given the scholarships for September.
Each of these programs will take real and painful cuts. But we will not let these vital services be eliminated for the people of California.
We also found ways to raise revenues responsibly.
Our plan levies a severance tax on oil companies finally placing California on par with the rest of the nation’s oil producing states. Our proposal is the same tax level the Governor pushed in January and won’t affect individual consumers.
We also raise the tobacco tax by $1.50 so consumers who voluntarily smoke can help address the impact that tobacco has on health care and other aspects of the state budget.
There is shared pain in this budget, but it is fair.
I encourage all Californians to take a close look at both our plan and the governor’s proposal.
You can do that at assembly dot CA dot GOV slash budget.
Looking at them side by side, I’m sure you’ll agree the legislature’s responsible, balanced approach is what we need to get California through these difficult times.
This has been Assembly Speaker Karen Bass.
Thank you for listening.
The legislature shouldn’t have to be defending its budget against the governor’s proposal. This is their job, not his.
I hate this sentiment:
I think that they are being more reasonable, although they are compromising with someone who has no interest in compromising with them. They are just giving way, allowing the governor to frame the debate (to the far right) and then moving halfway to that position, as a starting point.
They should propose a strong budget, pass it over and over again, and force the governor to veto it. That is how to play it in the press.
with people who are not reasonable about wanting others to have the right to live a life without the worries of starving to death or not being able to get medical care or go to school.
…she is not the person to lead this fight. First, she does not want to fight. Second, she is as about as charismatic as a bucket of warm spit.
How do we, the people, get stuck with crummy leaders like this?
Where are the payoffs coming from that puts a person like this in the advocate’s position for decent, effective government as opposed to the GrannyKiller and his posse of vile scum?
Our state and our nation is sinking under a load of lies, propaganda and misdirection not seen since Hitler’s Germany.
It’s past time to throw folks such as Bass out along with The GrannyKiller.
The Governor’s and GOP’s budget ideas — slashing services, refusal to raise taxes, possible layoffs or furloughs of state employees (and less income tax revenue in the bargain), cutting entitlements —
is that going to extend and deepen the recession? And maybe pull the US economy down with us in the process?