The Patriot Post® · Hiding in Plain Sight

We’ve seen much coverage of the budget battles in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. The lesson is that the Democrat’s desire to please unions and protect bureaucracy is greater than their desire to serve the state as a whole. They would rather hide than balance the budget and hold down taxes on all working families. California is suffering the same fate. However, California Democrats are still in the state, hiding in plain sight. California Democrats hold the governor’s office, and majorities in the Senate and Assembly. Since November 2010, they also have the power to raise taxes with a simple majority.

Brown budgeted two billion dollars more than RINO Schwarzenegger’s final budget. With the media’s coverage of the budget, how many of you knew that total spending under Brown’s proposed budget is more than the current budget? All I’ve seen is the mantra that we have a $27 billion deficit. This “draconian” budget allegedly “cuts” $12.5 billion in spending. So, instead of increasing from $125 billion to $127 billion, Brown would rather have proposed $137.5 billion in total spending. That, my friends, is a ten percent annual increase; or approximately five times the rate of inflation.

So, I guess we should be “thankful” that Brown saw fit to hold the increase to a “measly” two billion dollars. That “measly” increase covers inflation. So, there should be NO cuts from ANY area of Schwarzen-Kennedy’s final budget. But, Brown picked winners and losers. We see the losers nearly every day in the main stream media. We rarely see news about the winners. The winners are state employees, their pensions, their unions, and a bureaucracy filled with waste.

To be honest, California Democrats would have to vote for increased taxes to sustain public employee unions, their pensions, and government waste. Instead, they are hiding. The governor and the Democrats in the legislature want to put $12.5 billion in tax extensions on the June ballot. This would extend “temporary” taxes for five more years. However, there is a fly in their ointment.

The Democrat majority in the legislature is not sufficient to put a measure on the ballot. The Republicans have rightly said that the Democrats should use their majority, and their governor, to extend these taxes by law; or, to say it another way, to accept the responsibility for extending the taxes. The proposed June vote is designed to give Democrats cover. If the people vote to extend the taxes in June, the Democrat’s mantra in July will be, “the people asked that these taxes be extended.”

They are hiding in plain sight. It would be laughable if it was not so pathetic.

2011-12 total expenditures, all funds. See Figure Sum-10: http://www.dof.ca.gov/budget/historical/2011-12/governors/summary/documents/BS_SUM.pdf
2010-11 Page 5: http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/GovernorsBudget/pdf/fbudsum_1011.pdf

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