FLASHREPORT

There are always two challenges with my attempting to opine on complex policy proposals too quickly -- the first is that as someone who spends some time looking at policy, but is decidedly NOT a policy expert, it is risky to weigh in to substantively too early.  What if I totally misread or don't understand a key point or proposal?  The other challenge is that I also miss the chance to see what other people say first -- yikes!

That said, I want to make some broad observations.

I may be the only pundit out there who will say this -- but here it goes:  I'm excited!  While the circumstances of how we got to this point, such as years of overspending  and the current economic, recession, are tragic - they say that, "adverse situations create unique opportunities for change."

In all of the years that I have been involved in fighting against the ever-growing size of the state government, and working hard to protect the freedom and liberty of state taxpayers, it has been a losing battle.  It is true what they say -- is it much easier to increase state spending than it is to reduce it.  These proposed, substantial cuts in state spending represent a victory for those who feel that state spending has ballooned to an unsustainable amount.

Let me balance my comments a bit -- mainly because when you use words like "excited" -- well, it can be interpreted as being insensitive to the very real impacts that these cuts have on people.  Clearly there are state employees who stand to lose their jobs -- and the great increase in unemployed people during this recession is tragic indeed.  Also, a lot of the people, under these proposals, would lose some social services and are clearly going to endure increased hardship.  I suppose I could give some sort of intellectual argument about how many of them are, in fact, victims of the modern welfare state, but none that that eases their immediate increased burdon.  I feel bad for these folks - seriously.

Am I 'excited' about everything in these proposals?  From giving it a quick look -- there are some items in here that actually do not excite me (such as asking taxpayers to pay their taxes sooner rather than later, and some of the borrowing proposals)...  That said...  Taking this proposal on balance, I think that Governor Schwarzenegger has laid out a very realistic scenario of spending reductions necessary to bring our state's revenues into line with projected tax revenues. 

As the Governor said at his press conference, we do not have a monarchy here in California -- and most of these proposals need to be approved by the Democrat (read: public employee union) controlled State Legislature.  We will see what happens in that sausage factory.

The positive dynamic is that I believe that next week California voters will deliver a very strong message that taxayers are DONE funding any more revenues into state government.  So while some of the liberal ideologues in the legislature might literally be crying about it (they feel very strongly that they are on a moral high ground when they use government to redistribute property from one person to another) -- we are going to see real reductions.  Thank goodness, state governments cannot print money!

I will close out these comments by addressing his issue of the timing of this May Revision and announcing proposed cuts in a way that seems to perhaps manipulate Californians into voting for Propositions 1A - 1F next week.  I actually think it is pretty fair for the Governor to lay out on the table the policy consequences of the outcome of an election.  But what perhaps becomes a bit more questionable is the idea that these particular proposals will actually be the cuts that occur.  Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Governor, but a Governor can't guarantee legislative outcomes.  

I do note that the Governor did put the very political unpopular option of releasing prison inmates on his "if the ballot measures fail" list -- which certainly could be taken as a cynical attempt to manipulate an election outcome.  And I also note that his proposal says that the larger level of cuts will be necessary "if the ballot measures fail" -- when it really just the failure of 1C, 1D and 1E that impacts the current fiscal shortfall.

Well, that's my initial take.  As they say, take it or leave it!