{"id":8727,"date":"2009-05-01T19:47:37","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T19:47:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-05-01T19:48:01","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T19:48:01","slug":"another-day-older-and-deeper-in-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/05\/01\/another-day-older-and-deeper-in-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Day Older And Deeper In Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

April is the state’s big revenue month, as personal income taxes flow into the Franchise Tax Board and refund checks flow out (leaving me a whopping $200 richer). Unsurprisingly, this April’s receipts were significantly below expectations<\/a>:<\/p>\n

April, by far the largest tax collection month for California, ended in a whimper, coming up more than $1.8 billion short in personal income and corporate taxes.<\/p>\n

California was about $750 million short of projected tax collection after March, and April’s shortfall puts it $2.5 billion behind for the fiscal year ending June 30.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So we’re already $9 billion in the hole. If Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E fail, as it looks like they will<\/a>, then the deficit could grow to $16 billion.<\/p>\n

The size of the May 20 deficit suggests the need for Democratic legislators – the same people who constantly ask “what’s YOUR plan?” of progressive opponents of the flawed May 19 propositions – to answer that question themselves. A $9 billion deficit doesn’t seem like a good time to straitjacket ourselves further with a spending cap and a “rainy day fund on steroids” via Prop 1A, or blow a $2 billion hole in the budget by selling more lottery bonds than there are lottery revenues.<\/p>\n

And so today Dan Walters asks the same question I asked a couple weeks ago<\/a> – What’s Plan B?<\/a>:<\/p>\n

More taxes? Rejection of Proposition 1A, the linchpin measure, would not only short-circuit the taxes enacted in February but probably make any additional levies politically impossible. Democratic leaders could try again to enact taxes without Republican votes but would face a legal challenge and political fallout. A massive bailout from Washington? Unlikely.<\/p>\n

This is an immense mess, partly caused by the recession, partly caused by years of fiscal irresponsibility. And it may be the day of reckoning that Capitol politicians had long avoided, compounded by the obvious anger of voters….<\/p>\n

Wholesale slaughter of state spending may be their only option. This is a pivotal point in California political history, a fiscal Armageddon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is where the absence of a coordinated progressive and Democratic pushback against the demand to cut spending and the ideologies that underlay it<\/a> is so vital. Instead Democratic legislators have cast the post-May 19 spending cuts as somehow inevitable, instead of rallying the base to fight those cuts. Had that rallying effort been done I am convinced that there would be greater support from Democrats and progressives for the May 19 propositions.<\/p>\n

Walters also implies that there actually is a Plan B, which we at Calitics have been pushing for some time. The May 20 strategy, as I see it, involves at least these pieces:<\/p>\n