Jerry Brown’s California Doomsday Strategy Very Risky
Jerry Brown’s California Doomsday Strategy Very Risky
“Gov.-elect Jerry Brown appears poised to ask voters next year to raise taxes, or at least continue some temporary taxes that will soon expire, or see vital public programs, such as the schools, suffer irreparable harm.
Ever since his election last month, the once and future governor has been hinting that he’ll ask voters for additional state revenues to partially close a whopping budget deficit, now approaching $30 billion during the next 18 months.
As Brown staged the second of his public budget talk fests Tuesday, this one at UCLA and devoted to education, his doomsday strategy became clearer, although one had to interpret his characteristically elliptical allegories to see it.
Brown said he’ll propose a budget in January that will be so shocking that those affected should read about it while sitting down and hopes to conclude a deal in the Legislature within 60 days.
That’s clearly aimed at having a special election in May or June to give voters the choice of absorbing drastic cuts in education and other major state programs or reducing the impact, perhaps by half, by increasing taxes.”
Jerry Brown will NEVER cut public services unless he is faced with certain insolvency. He would much rather campaign for tax increases and this is what he will do.
But, the question is: How will unemployed citizens pay the taxes? And, how much can you push the public when there is so much uncertainty in the economy and they are not working.
California is broken and only dramatic, permanet cuts in its budget will restore some semblence of fiscal soundness.