Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

How do California’s Republicans think California should solve the state’s budget crisis, which results from people being laid off and losing their houses?  They are demanding nothing less than mass layoffs of state employees.

Every single budget compromise that has been negotiated has been rejected by the Republicans. They say there is one, and only one, budget solution they will vote for: mass layoffs of state employees and contractors.  They want the state’s teachers fired, construction employees fired, firefighters fired, DMV workers fired, medical workers fired and mass firings from the rest of the state’s departments.  And when they are done with that they demand cutbacks in medical care for the elderly, disabled, blind, and everyone else.

How are they getting away with this?  Why aren’t these few members of the legislature being recalled by enraged citizens?  Part of the problem is the way this is being presented to those citizens by the information sources.  The issue is presented as “the Legislature” and “politicians” who “won’t compromise” as if “both sides” are at fault.  They report on the people who are working hard to solve the state’s problems as if they are squabbling children and the public takes away the idea that government is a distant unsavory game that should be avoided.  Take this Merced Sun-Star headline, for instance: “Our View: Governor, Democrats and Republicans need to compromise.”   The editorial begins,

“As California’s financial troubles intensify daily, leading Democrats continue to blame Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for failing to win Republican votes for a budget solution.

. . . Democrats will have to offer concessions if they want their counterparts to compromise on tax hikes. So far, Democrats have failed to make even the most reasonable of concessions to save California from insolvency.”

The editorial just misinforms the public about what is going on!  Repeatedly the Democrats have compromised, giving up more and more, but the Republicans have refused to compromise in any way.  They just say, “No taxes” and that is that.  THIRTEEN paragraphs down, the second to last paragraph, begins,

“To be fair, Democrats in the last special session made some real concessions — agreeing to $8.1 billion in cuts to state programs — in their elusive search for a budget deal.”

Oh, really, to “be fair” they mention this, in spite of the headline and the rest of the editorial, any members of the public who are still reading can learn that the Democrats have offered BILLIONS in cuts to state programs to try to get the Republicans to move even an inch away from demanding mass layoffs.

California will remain ungovernable and will slip further into economic distress as long as a small minority is able to block budgets, and as long as the public’s sources of information continue to mislead.

Click through to Speak Out California

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

Yesterday Governor Schwarzenegger ordered 10,000 state government employees laid off and ordered the wages of 200,000 more cut down to the bare minimum allowed by law.  

This is 210,000 people who will not be keeping up with their mortgages or car payments or attending “back-to-school” sales.  This is thousands of local retailers that will see a sales decrease.   This is how many foreclosures and car repossessions.  What will this do to our own jobs and housing prices?

This is 210,000 families disrupted.

Why is this happening?  Because the Republicans refuse to make wealthy yacht and private plane buyers pay the same sales taxes the rest of us pay.  This is happening because the Republicans refuse to make the oil companies pay us for our oil as they take it out of the ground.  (Yes, even as oil companies post the largest ever profits of any companies in the history of the world.) The citizens of Alaska not only don’t pay state taxes, they receive a check every year, because their state government asked the oil companies to pay to take their oil.  In California the Republicans in state government apparently think they were elected to represent the interests of oil companies, not the public.

Republicans like to say that taxes “take money out of the economy” but the Governor’s actions yesterday show exactly the opposite: laying off workers and cutting their wages takes money out of the economy.  In fact taxes drive the state’s economy by building the infrastructure that enable economic growth.  The California state government is police and fire protection and schools and roads and courts and all of those are the engines of economic growth.  Taxes fund the services that people want like shorter lines at the DMV and libraries and did I mention schools?  These layoffs and wage cuts just illustrate what I wrote a while back about how tax cuts make us poor.

This is the Republican choice — giving the very wealthiest even more money at the expense of regular working people.

Click through to Speak Out California.