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Factbox: Reaction to California's budget cuts
(Reuters) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year and its deep spending cuts drew widespread criticism on Friday, especially from groups and local governments that have benefited from one of the most generous social safety nets among U.S. states.
Schwarzenegger's budget also drew praise from Republicans who believe the state needs tough medicine to get its financial house in order.
The following are reactions from labor, lobbyists, local government, recipients of state assistance, and a state Republican leader.
LABOR
Charles Idelson, spokesman for the California Nurses Association, one of the largest professional unions in the state:
"In general that seems to be the pattern with this governor. The pattern of seeking to undermine or erode social services and protections for California workers and working families while protecting the interests of his big ticket corporate backers.
"We need to increase revenues, close corporate tax loopholes and change the absurd structure of our legislative process that requires two-thirds votes for enactments of budgets, and if the governor wanted to really provide leadership that's what he would be doing."
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Jean Hurst, a budget analyst for the California State Association of Counties, which lobbies Sacramento on behalf of the county governments that administer much of the state's health and social services:
"It's very nice to use the term safety net ... but it is essentially nonexistent. You're seeing a circumstance where families will be pushed into poverty with no way out. I recognize that there are ideological differences on how to address that, but the truth is they (poor families) will be there, and they will be all of our problems. So it's difficult to understand how you move forward from that. And it's depressing as hell."
THE DISABLED
Wheelchair-bound Christina Mills, 32, of Sacramento, said subsidies for assistants are urgently needed for disabled people confined to their homes. The disabled in the work force also need them, said Mills, who suffers from a bone disorder and fractures easily.
"If they didn't have home-care workers to help them get dressed in the morning, they wouldn't be able to go to work."
"It's already hard to get home-care workers to work at current wages."
REPUBLICANS
Senate Budget Committee Vice Chairman Bob Dutton, of Rancho Cucamonga, told reporters: "I think it's time to get serious about right-sizing government. ... Want to or not, we are going to have to do the people's business."
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, Jim Christie in Sacramento; Compiled by Mary Milliken; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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VIVA MEXICO
Dear :
I am a resident or citizen of California and I am deeply concerned about the well being and fiscal soundness of our free, independent and sovereign State.
I understand that California is struggling financially.
I understand that California is also straining under the additional burden of providing services for illegal aliens under federal mandates, which burden is exacerbated by the federal government’s neglect of its duty to guard and secure our borders.
I also understand that California has made claims with the federal government seeking reimbursement for those costs.
Please consider this suggestion for a solution to all three problems. Right now, California, as well as all other states, are exempt, beyond the taxing authority of the federal government. The federal government may not tax any state activity because it is not within the power of one sovereignty to tax (destroy) that which another sovereignty has the power to create. See McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819); Farrington v. Tennessee, 95 U.S. 679 (1877); and, by way of example, The Union Bank v. Hill, 43 Tenn. 325 (1866).
California has waived its immunity from federal taxation of its activities and submitted to withholding of taxes on its employees. Since these employees’ employment exists solely by virtue of the authority of the sovereign State of California, and since they are employed as such solely by virtue of the permission and consent of the sovereign State of California, their employment, too, is exempt from federal taxation. (See Marshall’s definition of extent of taxing authority as co-extensive with sovereignty and sovereignty being limited to those subjects that either exist by its authority or are introduced by its permission. McCulloch, supra.)
One single step, ceasing federal tax withholding, and at the same time cutting wages and salaries down to the pre-federal withholding net, would be a way to redirect those billions of dollars California is now paying to the federal government to the state’s general fund. It would also provide employees with an increase in their net pay because by virtue of the “reduction” of their gross pay their withholding of state income taxes would be reduced.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Many of California’s financial woes are directly attributable to the federal government, so why should California make this huge gift of taxes out of comity when that respect and deference is answered with abuse, disrespect and indifference?
California is a free and independent sovereignty. Although the States have been hypnotized into believing that their hind legs are paralyzed, that does not mean the spell cannot be broken and our state cannot stand and reclaim the full extent of its sovereignty, which includes exemption from federal taxation. Merely asserting that sovereignty, which is the duty of the governor and our legislature, can not only solve California’s budgetary crisis, it can improve the lives of its public servants.
Furthermore, California can, like the State of Montana, pass nullification laws (not resolutions), nullifying the laws of the Federal government that overstep the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution that affect solely internal California matters. Doing so would allow California to tax previously untaxable sources of income; for example, marijuana sales, which is one of California’s largest cash crops. Such actions could possibly bring in billions in tax revenues, free up resources, save money now spent on ineffective programs, and redirect law enforcement to more serious crimes.
To be a free and sovereign state, California must first begin to think like a free and sovereign state and then act like a free and sovereign state. Anything less is to reduce our great state to being a mere political subdivision of the federal government, a colony of a distant and indifferent government. We can be more than that.
Respectfully,
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