California Budget Balancing Act

July 1, 2009 at 10:25 am (By Randy)

California is facing a $24,000,000,000 budget deficit. The Los Angeles Times has a handy interactive applet that allows readers to try balancing it themselves. I managed to end up with a surplus of $1 billion without raising taxes or cutting any benefits for the poor. If my plan were enacted, however, many state workers would probably walk out. Then again, our unemployment rate is almost 12%, so replacing the malcontents may not be all that hard.

6 Comments

  1. amba12 said,

    July 1, 2009 at 11:28 am

    Are they actually collecting people’s solutions? This could be the beginning of government by the people. (Yeah, right.)

  2. Kat said,

    July 1, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    It would be interesting if they did collect what every one proposed…they might not like what they find out though. They might be shocked at what Californians are willing to cut.

  3. Donna B. said,

    July 1, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    I’d like to see one of those for the Feds.

  4. susan said,

    July 1, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    Make both branches of state legislature part time.

  5. Randy said,

    July 1, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    Wish we could, Susan – biennial sessions would be enough!!! And enlarge the legislature while we’re at it. Right now, each assembly district has about half a million and state senate district about a million. New Hampshire has 500 members in its lower house. If California did, that would be about 70,000 people per Assembly district. Power to the people, not the special interests in Sacramento!

  6. wj said,

    July 2, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    We may have an opportunity before us, over the next couple of years. It seems rather likely that California will manage to replace our current redistricting process (Gerrymanders R Us) with something a little more sensible. At which point, there is a reasonable chance that we will get less ideologically extreme legislators — at least some of them.

    But it will be interesting to see if that also changes the massively dysfunctional state government. At least, the part that is supposed to turn out a budget on time every year. My guess is that we will demonstrate a much better kind of government. But we shall see….

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