Governor musclehead released his much awaited Arduin (shout out to N.Y. and Fla.) budget to address CA's $15 billion deficit. Is it full of cuts to prisons, education or "waste, fraud and abuse?" No. The few really major cuts are to the poor and disabled. The rest, up to $11 billion of the $15 billon is smoke and mirrors.
The money quote, from the How to Talk Like a Republican Handbook:
"Those budgets were shell games, using tricks and gimmicks to put off the hard decisions until after the next election cycle."
Behold:
- $500 million magically extracted from indian tribes
- $3 billion of new bororrowing from the March bond initiative
- $1 billion in phantom cuts to Medi-Cal, previously ruled illegal by the courts
- $2 billion in deferred growth to be owed to the schools under Prop. 98
- $2.9 billion in new taxes from fake growth projections
Over at
Professor Tax, more of the shell game is exposed. He opines,
"Our State Budget Director, it seems, has engaged in accounting practices that would subject her to criminal prosecution if used in the private sector. If the charismatic Governor wants to find "fraud and abuse", he should look at his own budget document."
Out of close to $15 billion in deficit reduction, 2/3 of it is pulled out of thin air.
Too bad about those disabled kids, huh, Governor?
Unaddressed is the $15 billion structural deficit which include Musclebrain's $4 billion VLF problem. For those keeping score at home, "crazy deficit spending" seems to be the administration's motto.