Political Commentary

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has shirked his responsibility to the voters. If you recall, Schwarzenneger was elected after a recall of Gray Davis, largely because of a projected $35 Billion dollar deficit. Governor Davis’ recovery plan was to spend more tax dollars to stimulate the economy. This is sort of like a perpetual motion machine, and wouldn’t have worked, but that is another story.

Since taking office, it appears that Schwarzenegger has succeeded in bringing the deficit down. Regardless of the rants of conservative talk show hosts, the projected $35 billion dollar deficit is now down to a projected $14 billion dollar deficit. That is more than a 50% reduction, so something must be going right. The problem, though, is that California revenues apparently went up 29% in the same period, if the aforementioned talk show hosts can be believed. At the same time, spending went up 33%.

In response to the ongoing deficit in California, the Governor requested that every department cut their spending by 10%. Now you might think that this was a wise thing to do, to help cut into the deficit. I disagree, however. Certain things should have a higher priority than others. For example, lets just say that Education is our highest priority. Then we should keep the education budget where it is, and cut other things that are lower priority. By simply ordering everyone to cut 10%, Governor Schwarzenegger has avoided making any hard decisions, and made everyone equally mad, but nobody can complain that he is being unfair.

What should he have done? He should have made a list of the major expenditure areas and prioritized them. Right now, I believe that Fire Protection should probably be at the top of the list. Other state services such as law enforcement, and CalTrans should also have a high priority. I do think that CalTrans should probably be streamlined some, and made more efficient, so they could probably provide equal services at less expense. While I mentioned education above, I think at the state level, it probably has a lower priority, except for the state colleges. I also believe that the education system is full of corruption and waste, and could be pruned back very effectively at a great savings to the taxpayer.

If Governor Schwarzenegger was really doing the job we elected him to, he would not take the 10% cop out, but start making the hard decisions that would reduce the financial burden on the taxpayers of this state. All of the state departments could probably cut spending and not loose any capability, but it would be better to make the whole government more efficient, and even add to the budgets of important deparments.