Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally managed to bring people with differing viewpoints together to agree in a post-partisan fashion. See, nobody likes his revised budget plan, as Bob Salladay reports. Conservatives think that it doesn't go far enough, spends too much, and relies on too many shaky budgeting gimmicks, like privatizing the lottery for a short-term cash infusion. Democratic leaders have rightly called it mean-spirited and cruel for slashing aid to the poor and cutting public transit funding, among other things. The state's pundit class has sneered at the cynical nature of saying that you could balance the budget responsibly to begin with. And the Legislative Analyst's Office, who are supposed to play it right down the middle, criticize the revision as well.
The administration has attempted to address a $2 billion decline in the state's fiscal outlook. Due to several overly optimistic assumptions, however, the May Revision overstates its reserve by about $1.7 billion-leaving an estimated reserve of $529 million. Even this reserve level would be subject to considerable risks and pressures. As a result, the Legislature will face a significant challenge to develop a 2007-08 budget that realistically reflects revenues and spending while maintaining a prudent reserve. As it sets its own priorities, it should identify solutions that realistically balance the state's finances on an ongoing basis while also avoiding new ongoing commitments (absent identified funding to pay for them).
The Governor is more about fantasy than reality, anyway, so it shouldn't be suprising that his budget numbers would be a carefully crafted fiction.
A budget is a moral document. Priorities in the budget mirror priorities in the real world, what kind of California you want to see. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to see a California where investment bankers get rich while the poor and the middle class who struggle to survive are left on their own. And this would have been worse if the state didn't find a little more unexpected revenue at the end of last month. Nobody should be surprised that this Governor automatically thinks "cut the poor" when faced with a budget crunch. That translates directly to who he values in society. This isn't the result of Arnold "reverting back" to his pre-post-partisan self, as Speaker Nunez claimed in his statement. This is who he's always been.
UPDATE: One thing that should be stated is that the Governor is very much an acolyte of Reaganomics. He puts everything on credit and passes the problems off to future executives and future generations.
