The California legislature failed to get the two-thirds vote needed to pass a Democratic Party proposal to address the state’s $24 billion budget deficit. Democrats will now enter closed-door negotiations with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on a compromise that will include even more massive cuts in social services.
Discussions between the two parties have been ongoing for the last several weeks, much of it in secret and with no public input. Both sides have already agreed that draconian cuts in basic social programs are necessary.
To offset some cuts, however, Democrats had proposed a variety of mainly regressive tax increases, which require the support of a two-thirds majority in the legislature. This proposal failed as expected on Wednesday, largely along party lines. The Democrats control both houses of the state legislature, but do not have a two-thirds majority.
The Democratic Party accepts the argument that the only way to fix California’s budget deficit is to strangle what remains of public education and the social safety net. Senator Gloria Romero, a Democrat, told The Los Angeles Times, “When someone tells us ‘No new cuts,’ I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me that.’...There is the sense that we must do what we must do to keep California solvent.”
Indeed, the proposed tax increases were largely for show. Even before the vote, Democrats acknowledged that they would not pass. Last week Schwarzenegger responded to a question about what kind of fight he expected over the tax increases by responding, “Well, what is being said and what is being done, as you know, are sometimes two different things.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/cali-j25.shtml
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