Yesterday California voted on a slate of budget measures put forth by tax-and-spend Democrats. Three of them were outright terrible for the state, two were playing pure budgetary shell games, and one was a meaningless propaganda exercise meant to bolster the rest.
Proposition 1F, the propaganda exercise that attempts to deny pay raises for state elected officials when the budget is in deficit, passed and did so overwhelmingly: 74% Yes, 26% No. The rest? Not so much. They all failed with the Nos getting anywhere from 63% to 66% of the vote!
Where do we go from here? I’ll quote from my piece yesterday discussing Chuck DeVore’s analysis of the issue:
Today he pointed out that we face about a 23 billion dollar deficit on an approximately 90 billion dollar general fund.
….Should 1A fail, DeVore thinks we’ll face one of two actions by the Democrats. One option would be to cut popular government programs like police, fire, medical, and schools, hoping to burn down the state and blame it on Republicans. The other would be to pass an illegal tax increase with only a simple majority instead of the Constitutionally-required two-thirds majority. Either option will devastate our already-lagging state economy. The Assemblyman thinks we’ll be the second-last state to recover from this economic slowdown (I assume the last being Michigan under its equally-horrible Democrat Governor Granholm).
So we won, but now the real fight begins. It’s a deathmatch for the California economy, and much may hinge on what side Governor Schwarzenegger chooses to join for it. Will he join the tax hikers or the spending cutters?
Time will tell.