Community Advocates: Brown's Budget Is Filled With 'Horrific Choices'
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Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing a combination of spending cuts and tax increases to help California recover from its budget woes (Paresh Dave/Neon Tommy)
Brown's plan would cut $1.2 billion from Medi-Cal and $2 billion out of education. In addition, state workers would be asked to take a 5 percent pay cut to help California close its budget gap. Public schools and higher education could suffer even further if voters in the state do not approve an initiative in November to increase income and sales taxes, Brown said.
The announcement came just two days after Brown revealed that the state's deficit had swelled to $16 billion. That figure nearly doubled the $9.2 billion deficit projected in January when he released his initial budget proposal for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which starts July 1.
"Tax receipts are coming in lower than expected. And the federal governments and the courts have blocked us from making billions in necessary budget reductions," Brown said in a YouTube video posted online over the weekend.
California Partnership, a statewide coalition devoted to reducing poverty, held a rally at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles Monday afternoon, where Brown was answering questions from the media. Astrid Campos, one of the event organizers, said the cuts would be detrimental to children, seniors and people with disabilities.
"We're protesting the devastating cuts and asking for there to be another way to balance the budget instead of on the backs of the most vulnerable," Campos said.
Under the governor’s budget-balancing proposal, CalWORKS would lose $880 million in funding, childcare services would lose about $450 million and in-home supportive services would lose roughly $225 million.
“Governor Brown’s budget is filled with horrific choices that will gut our social safety net and hurt programs that help Californians get back to work. Slashing billions from health and human services is detrimental and even antithetical to California’s recovery,” California Partnership Director Vanessa Aramayo said in a statement.
To offset the cuts, Brown made a pitch to voters to support a tax increase initiative on November's ballot that would go toward funding K-12 schools and community colleges.
"I'm linking the serious budget reductions with a plea to the voters, please increase taxes temporarily," Brown said at a morning news conference.
Under the tax proposal, residents earning between $250,000 and $300,000 would pay 10.3 percent in income taxes as opposed to the previous rate of 9.71 percent. The rate would become 11.3 percent for earners making between $350,000 and $500,000, and 13.3 percent for those making $1 million or more. The income tax increases on the wealthy would be in place for seven years.
"Someone who is making $40,000 a year is paying the same [tax rate] as Kim Kardashian," Campos said. The reality TV star allegedly paid 10.3 percent income tax on the $12 million she made in 2010.
Brown also tackled the issue of California's sales tax and proposed raising it to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent for a period of four years. If the tax increase measure fails, K-12 schools and community colleges would receive roughly $5.5 billion less funding, according to The Los Angeles Times.
"We can't fill a hole of this magnitude with cuts alone without doing severe damage to our schools," Brown said in his YouTube message.
Campos said that Brown’s tax increase plan would help solve the state’s budget issues, but she would like to see California do more to increase its corporate tax rate. She suggested that the cuts to programs assisting the state's needy would not be necessary if the corporate tax rate were higher than the current 8.84 percent.
"Corporations in California get so many sweet deals," Campos said. "There's corporate loopholes, there's a lot of tax breaks that they get and they're just not paying their fair share."
She urged voters to head out to the ballot and support the tax increases in November.
"We need to vote 'yes' on that revenue initiative to raise taxes on the wealthy," Campos said. "Even if you're not being impacted, your community around you is being impacted."
The state Legislature has until June 15 to pass a budget. The governor's revised budget plan can be viewed here.
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If no other law is passed by the Government, mandatory (E-verify H.R. 2885) needs to be the policy of this country? Both political parties have done nothing about this unlawful epidemic, as the Democrats expect blocs of minority voters-Whether a citizen or not makes no difference to them. Republicans just want to exploit the cheap labor for their big corporate campaign contributors. POLITICS IS ABOUT MONEY, INFLUENCE AND POWER—NOTHING MORE? Our country is so divided; brain washed by the left and illegal immigration has caused this massive spreading abyss. The agendas are so irreparable that the government has turned on its own people, as we have seen with Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and others waiting for court outcomes. Our nation has turned into a welfare state for foreign countries own populace. Right now, California has been hit a hard financial blow, because of its Liberal state capitol, is genuflecting to the illegal alien invasion, carrying a cost of $16 billion dollars with no end in sight. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich With the $550 million for public safety and nearly $500 million for healthcare, the total cost for illegal immigrants to County taxpayers exceeds $1.6 billion dollars a year, this doesn't cover the billions in education costs; and doesn't include the billions in education. Unfortunately left wing Governor Jerry (moonbeam) Brown is now preaching more taxes, cuts in benefits—when removing the millions of foreign national could save the state. Not state, not county but a federal law that will stop this theft of American jobs. Unscrupulous employers need to be held accountable and harshly find and sentenced to prison. Rather than go into the details about the taxpayers ripped off, judge for yourself by going to NumbersUSA and American Patrol websites.
Also the most costly payout from taxpayers is the children that are slipped in by visitors from other countries or across our poorly enforced fence at the border that are eligible to become citizens, which promotes massive chain migration and enables parents to settle here. Over 400 thousand are estimated to take advantage of this misinterpreted law, again costing genuine Americans welfare programs. The birthright citizenship law must be amended, so only children with one citizen parent allows this right. Don’t remain blind to the profiteers in Washington and demand they enforce immigration laws. Because of this fiasco of our Immigration laws business owners are directly responsible for the growing amount of $113 Billion dollars in public welfare programs.
According to the Heritage Foundation if Democrats get their way, we would be adding a further 2.6 Trillion dollars to the already accelerating 15.6 Trillion dollars if an amnesty is imposed. Both political parties are responsible for this parasitic invasion, which is catering to any of the 20 million plus illegal aliens already here. Even while they are stealing us blind of our own impoverished, our own sick and homeless, they are stealing another $4.2 billion dollars from taxpayers through the incompetence of the IRS, who would audit American for exaggerating on the business car mileage. Even illogical to this is that illegal aliens are allowed to wire out of America annually over $40 billion dollars to foreign banks not being absorbed back into the economy. Our country has been neglected for years, occupied by illegal immigrants and hordes of criminals. Mitt Romney better not turn on the massive TEA PARTY on this issue, or they will realize he cannot be trusted. Americans haven’t learned that you cannot get something for nothing. Half of this country’s population, live off the other half’s income and that is why our social safety nets are failing. The last realistic chance we have of getting out of our financial mess is to remove the old members of Congress and state capitals, with Tea Party leaders. It happened in Indiana when Senator Richard Lugar was retired, replaced by a Tea Party lawmaker.