Without higher taxes, how?
I'll say it again since you are obviously hard of hearing. If the California state budget is cut back to the year before Davis took office, increased for inflation, and increased for population growth, the resulting budget (including all expenditures) would be $120.3 Billion. That is more than $30 billion less than it current spending after Davis' cuts. I explained the precise calculation here:
Message 19386626
50% of the growth in spending has been in education and Arnold has vowed not to touch it.
What is your basis for saying that "50 percent of the growth in spending has been in education"? I didn't notice a cite to anything in your post. In fact, if you are talking about K-12 education that is not true. If you are talking about higher education including community colleges, it's also not true.
Here are the exact numbers. If you weren't so lazy (I would be more charitable but I have given you the link to this official state site about 12 times now and obviously you don't care what it says since you keep just making things up), you could look at the line item breakdown by department for the California state budget. You can do this by clicking (All) for categories of expenses in the upper right hand corner, then looking at the spreadsheet for the last six years (the first year before Davis and then the last five years). Here's the link again:
lao.ca.gov
You will see that California breaks its budget down into categories. There are 12 categories:
1. Legislative, Judicial and Executive
2. State and Consumer Services
3. Business, Transportation and Housing
4. Trade and Commerce Agency
5. Resource Agency
6. California Environmental Protection
7. Health and Human Services
8. Youth and Adult Corrections
9. K-12 Education
10. Higher Education
11. Labor and Workforce Development Agency
12. General Government
Of these categories, two relate to education (#9 and #10). The rest relate to other government services.
In the last pre-Davis budget year, California's total expenditures were $109,635,318,000.00 (this includes all expenditures, not just those defined as "general fund", because the people must somehow fund all expenditures through taxes. Numbers are rounded into thousands). In Davis' fourth year (2001-02), California's total expenditures peaked at $166,833,833,000.00. Then Davis cut the budget, so that in the current budget year (the last year under Davis, it turns out) the projected expenditure level is $154,656,582,000.00.
So the increase in California's state budget total expenditures from the last year before Davis to the last year under Davis is $45,021,264,000 ($154,656,582,000- $109,635,318,000). The question is, where did the difference (change) come from? You said half of the increase in spending was in education. In fact, here are the exact amounts of the changes between the budget Davis inherited and the budget he left for Arnold:
1. Legislative, Judicial and Executive +$2,027,550,000 (73% increase)
2. State and Consumer Services + $144,516,000 (16% increase)
3. Business, Transportation and Housing + $1,664,957,000 (23% increase)
4. Trade and Commerce Agency -$119,379,000 (89% decrease)
5. Resource Agency +$2,112,832,000 (102% increase)
6. California Environmental Protection + $426,641,000 (49% increase)
7. Health and Human Services +$13,622,552,000 (33% increase)
8. Youth and Adult Corrections +$1,102,330,000 (23% increase)
9. K-12 Education +$10,799,773,000 (37% increase)
10. Higher Education + $4,771,495,000 (36% increase)
11. Labor and Workforce Development Agency +$8,505,833,000 (new category, did not exist as separate category in 1997-98)
12. General Government -$37,836,000 (1% decrease)
Roughly $15.6 billion of the more than $45 billion in California spending increases under Davis related to education. That is just over a third, not half. And the difference is important, because it means that if you rolled back the rest of the increases and left education alone with its huge increases intact, you could easily cut 12-13 billion that Arnold needs to cut.
otherwise what solution is there? Refuse emergency health care to the sick, injured and dying? Fire thousands of cops and firemen? Release dangerous felons back onto the streets?
These things didn't happen in 1997-98, and if you spend at the same level now they won't happen now. The people are not going to listen to your scare tactics when the numbers simply don't support anything that you are saying. |
