Unfair Budget Evidence of Broken Process

The budget passed by the Legislature on February 20, to plug California’s $42 billion budget hole is disastrous to the state’s working people, seniors, people with disabilities and school children. It makes $15 billion more in cuts, and worse, creates a budget cap that makes these cuts permanent.

To ruin California’s public services while giving away $1 billion a year in corporate taxes and only getting temporary and inadequate revenues in return is a bad deal for working families. Large corporations are the winners; Californians who are struggling to get by are the losers.

“Proving that our budget process is broken, the state’s two-thirds vote requirement allowed the minority party to bring us to the brink of disaster,” said Courtni Pugh, executive director of SEIU California State Council. “SEIU believes that we need to fix the broken budget process to protect the interests of the majority of Californians, especially kids, seniors and people with disabilities.”

Following are some of the reasons this budget will hurt so many Californians:
•Deep cuts. The budget that passed contains $15 billion in devastating cuts to California’s vital public services. This includes cuts to seniors and people with disabilities, cuts to schools, and cuts to struggling low-income families, as well as additional possible cuts to home care and healthcare. These cuts come on top of $16 billion in cuts in the three previous budget cycles.

•Cuts made permanent with a budget cap. But worse than any individual cut is the budget cap, which will make the cuts permanent. This will lock in the effects of this economic crisis and strangle public services in California for generations if voters approve it. Healthcare, education, home care, and other vital services may never recover.

•Temporary revenue. At the same time, the revenue in the deal is temporary, with or without the cap. This will force more even more cuts in the future.

•Tax give-aways. While impoverished seniors and struggling families suffer with less, this deal gives large national and multinational corporations a gift of more than $1 billion every year in taxpayer dollars when fully implemented.

•Non-budget-related items. Relaxing environmental laws and making other unpopular changes not related to the budget are examples of the dysfunction of the requirement that 2/3 of the California Legislature pass a budget.

•Worst time for cuts. People need more help in this economy, not less. Now is the worst possible time to make cuts to our safety net, and the worst thing to do for our state and local economies is for the state to pull back billions.