According to the Sacramento Bee, Governor Schwarzenegger is preparing to call a special session to deal with the massive, multi-billion dollar shortfall in this fiscal year’s budget (this doesn’t even address the even bigger shortfall anticipated for the FY 09-10 budget that would be adopted next year).
Apparently this session would be called in a couple of weeks (after the election) and it would impact the current legislature (many of whom will be departing from the legislature in early December).
We can only assume that this will be a “Live Within Our Means” belt tightening session, and I think that the resolve of this particular group of legislative Republicans to oppose any tax increases on Californians to resolve the negative impacts of a massive overspending problem is not only clear – but crystal clear.
So hopefully the Governor will open this special session by framing the issue as being the ongoing effects of spending more than we have (remember, state government spending ballooned over 40% in just three years!), and this time focus on where we can make cuts (as opposed to during the budget debate when he kept asking for a massive multi-billion dollar increase in the state’s income tax — a killer to the economy AND poor policy).
Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill was right on today, when he addressed the issue of increased taxes and this special session:
Every California legislator should have two things with them as "working materials" over the next couple of weeks before this special session — a print out of the massive $100,000,000,000.00++ state budget, and a red sharpie pen.