Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Reaction to Governor’s Speech – NEGATIVE

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gives his ‘state of the state’ address in Sacramento, California, January 5, 2006. A year after picking a bitter fight with legislators that he ended up losing at the polls, Schwarzenegger unveiled a massive 10-year spending plan on Thursday aimed at winning back Californian support ahead of his November re-election effort.

San Francisco Chronicle: BOLD AGENDA FOR STATE
BIGGEST BUILDING PLAN SINCE ’60S: Some lawmakers are skeptical Schwarzenegger can pull it off

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious 10-year plan to invest an additional $222 billion in California’s aging transportation system and other public works is the first major commitment by a governor to rebuild the state since the 1960s.

During that decade, primarily under the administration of Democrat Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, California created university campuses, the state water project and a network of highways that helped fuel the state’s economic growth.

“This state was built on those big water projects and highway projects. Since then we haven’t done anything on a scale like this,” said Dennis Oliver, a spokesman for the California Alliance for Jobs, an Emeryville organization that represents highway construction companies and unions and has backed increased public works spending for more than a decade.

Over the next five election cycles, beginning next June, Schwarzenegger wants to parcel out bonds for highways, transit systems, flood control projects, port improvements, jails, courts, levees, and construction and modernization of public schools and universities.

Lawmakers reacted with caution to such an overwhelming proposal.

The reaction to Governor Schwarzenegger’s is NEGATIVE. Some will wait for the budgetary details next week but………

Dan Walters: Schwarzenegger may be putting himself into a political pitfall

Clearly, however, it was ginned up as a vehicle to restore Schwarzenegger’s popularity. He is, in effect, putting his political eggs into a single basket, hoping that he can move the “strategic growth plan” through a Legislature dominated by those who really want him to fail and then persuade skeptical voters to accept the massive debt that it involves.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal

It is striking to watch a governor who called for ‘blowing up bureaucratic boxes’ a year ago now say that the answer to the state’s problems is to “build it” and the solution will come. The governor’s new tack may indeed get him through the 2006 election but the contrast with last year’s State of the State speech is so dramatic that the Los Angeles Times was moved to note that “a central question (of the coming campaing) is apt to be whether Schwarzenegger is motivated more by core beliefs or a quest for personal success.” The early evidence isn’t encouraging.

“I applaud his grand vision,” said Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. “But sometimes too much is less valuable than focusing on a few doable issues.”

“He talked about putting out a framework for the next 20 years,” said Assembly GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. “Now the whole debate will be, what reforms can there be so that the money gets used efficiently, and then how do we pay for it?”

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and other lawmakers expressed skepticism at putting many bond measures on ballots for several election cycles.

“It’s impossible to grasp,” the Oakland Democrat said. “People are so skeptical — if you don’t tell them specifics, they don’t believe it. They have earned the skepticism about our ability to improve things. I would much prefer to put something reasonable on the table that they believe in that outlines what they are interested in.”

Mark Williams of KFBK (1530 in Sacramento) called the Governor a liar, someone who can’t be trusted–that he wasted the last two years and was going to waste this year.

John Ziegler of KFI (640 in Los Angeles) called it a “surrender speech” and that the Governor sounded like a Democrat, not a Republican.

Inga Barks of KMJ (580 in Fresno) wanted Senator McClintock to run instead of Schwarzenegger, saying this is not the guy we supported in the Recall–that he sounded more like Gray Davis.

Steve Frank of the California Political News and Views

This much I know and believe, that while the Governor was correct in his vision and needs for the future, the financing is no where near complete. To be complete it must also include the enforcement of immigration laws along with the needed changes in pension funding–otherwise this will be a vision without a possibility. And time is running short. With the explosion in the costs of illegal immigration and the crisis in government pension plans, a complete re-financing of the State, not just the infrastructure, is needed now. Hopefully, the budget will provide the answers next week.

Orange County Register: What was he thinking?

EDITORIAL: Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to spend more – but where will the money come from?

But with state bond debt already stretching a prudent limit and the state still stuck in a rut of a $4 billion yearly structural deficit, how can the state sustain so much more spending and maintain fiscal discipline?

He noted that this is the state of the California Dream. Yes, but which one?

Developing as budgetary details details are released………

Previous:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California 2006 State of the State

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Toll Roads in California’s Future?

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Infrastructure Bond Trial Balloon – $25-27 Billion

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Governor Expected to Propose College Fee Freeze

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California Infrastructure Bond Will NOT Include Tax Increases

California Taxes Watch: Builders and Politicians Pushing Bond Package

Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: Here Come the Tax Increases

Technorati Tags: ArnoldSchwarzenegger, CaliforniaElection2006, California, AllianceforJobs, Californiabondissue, CaliforniaTollRoads, GrayDavis