State Spending
We
have witnessed a deterioration of historic proportions in the state budget –
from a multi-billion dollar surplus inherited by Democrats when they took
control of state government in 1998, to a 38 billion dollar deficit in the
current year and a structural deficit that is adding 8 to 10 billion dollars
to the deficit each year. This is fiscal mismanagement on a massive scale
that is a direct result of Democrat overspending.
In
the November 2000 election campaign, I warned about the tremendous risk
involved with committing the then surplus revenues to new programs and to
growth of on-going programs. But the Legislature could not seem to remember
that only 10 years earlier a slowdown in the economy caused such a dramatic
reduction in revenue that state government was unable to pay its bills.
During
the first four years of complete Democrat control, the state’s general fund
budget increased from 58 billion dollars to more than 79 billion dollars, an
increase of more than 35 percent, while Democrats in the Legislature were not
constrained by a Republican in the Governor’s office. Now, we are paying the
price of locking in unsustainable expenditures for programs that couldn’t be
funded without surplus tax collections from stock market gains. These are problems that could have easily been
avoided by keeping the state’s financial house in order. As a member of the
State Assembly, I would work to:
- Hold the line
on taxes, fees, and government mandated costs.
- Make sure that
state spending is based on carefully planned budgets for necessary services.
- Improve the
accountability for state spending.
- Remove barriers
to the economic growth that is needed to bring California's tax base into balance with
long term expenditures.
State
spending is now out of control, and all the games to hide it have already
been played. The special funds have all been raided, including our
transportation construction funds. The tobacco litigation settlement funds
have been turned into a one-time payment that is all used up. And all
possible delays and deferrals of bill payments have already been taken
advantage of. So Democrats in the
Legislature can no longer hide the truth about the fiscal mess they created, but
they still want you to trust them to fix it. However, you can count on the Democrat fix to
be much higher taxes and fees that will drive jobs, business, and agriculture
out of California and will end up making our current problems much
worse.
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