The giant cuts proposed by the Obama Administration (and worse ones suggested by the GOP) will hurt the economic recovery, hurt the poor, hurt the nation’s future — and hurt California. Let’s remember, as Brian Leubitz notes at Calitics, we live in a net donor state — for every dollar Californians send to Washington, the state gets 80 cents back. And now the president wants to make cuts that will further mess up the state budget — and since Gov. Jerry Brown is sending a lot of Sacramento’s work back to the counties, the shit will keep rolling downhill.
It’s true that Obama is also talking about tax hikes, but that’s going to be hard to get through the House. And even if he gets his higher taxes on oil and gas producers and high-income individuals, he still wants to cut spending — that is, non-military spending.
So over the next few months, as Washington politicians try to out-cut each other and talk about “living within our means” (except for wars that nobody wants to pay for but we keep fighting anyway), look for the budget crisis in Sacramento and San Francisco to get worse.
One ray of hope: If Jerry Brown is willing to back up his “local-government-does-it-better” campaign by giving local government the right to raise taxes abit more easily, then he’ll support Sen. Mark Leno’s bill to allow counties to raise the Vehicle License Fee. That might even come close to saving SF what Washington and Sacramento take away.