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Loren Faulkner

It’s Official: Governor Schwarzenegger Will Veto The Budget
September 16, 2008

Just hours after the State legislature passed the 2008-2009 budget after a 77 day delay, the Governor in a televised response Tuesday afternoon said he will veto it. He called it a “fake budget reform” that does not resolve the fundamental problems with the budget making process year after year. (View his speech at www.sacbee.com)

He said that the budget problems can be solved with a “rainy day” fund that can be drawn from to pay off some $5 to $6 billion in future years, while making up the rest of the shortfalls through wise cutting. He accused the legislature of refusing, year after year, to realistically and responsibly deal with California’s budgetary problems.

One of the problems with the latest budget is that California taxpayers would be paying a higher withholding tax right away, and businesses would pay taxes earlier, too. All this to get tax money into the State coffers fast, while doing nothing but “kicking the can down the alley” into next year’s budget with the very same issues as this year…

He expects the legislature to override his veto, but said he will hit back by vetoing hundreds of bills that are currently on his desk.

Personally, I do not want a ten percent increase of State withholding taxes taken from my paycheck--starting in January as this budget dictates-- just so these lawmakers can delay, once again, fixing the fundamental problems of wasteful spending programs that do not make fiscal sense, nor common sense.

But along the lines of not making sense will be what happens to businesses and jobs in California when the full brunt of California’s Green House Gas rulings and the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) off-road diesel regulations start to take effect. Then we will see how the economy could sputter, in a way that will grab everyone’s attention.

Posted by Loren Faulkner on September 16, 2008 | Comments (0)