Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Budget Cuts

The California legislature made substantial progress today in cutting billions of dollars out of the state budget. Both the Senate and the Assembly agreed to cut a significant amount of money out of welfare to work program and other state welfare programs as well as funds for developmental disability, childhood developmental and mental health services. Welfare programs including Medi-Cal and welfare to work program face budget cuts at the expense of the people who need it the most. Most of these cuts passed through both the Assembly and Senate with ease.
On the contrary to everyone voting for budget cuts, there was no vote on increase in taxes. The vote increase in taxes is expected to get a little more debate going on between the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats showed bipartisanship by agreeing to the cuts in health care and welfare programs but will the Republicans share the same spirit on increasing taxes? There is no clear answer.
I think that the budget cuts voted on today are double edged swords. These cuts will definitely help lower to state debt but they also target the most vulnerable people in the state. Also, I am surprised at how the Democrats, especially in the Senate, are agreeing to these budget cuts in health care and welfare programs. I would like to think it is an act of bipartisanship in order solve large problem of the state debt. I would like to see this spirit on the vote for taxes as well.
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3 comments:

alice :] said...

Wow, I'm impressed by the willingness of both parties. Like Ayaka says, it's absolutely a double-edged sword, but I think that this is a big step in the right direction. Yes, cutting funding is always problematic, but there's really nothing else that can be done. Also, this shows that the parties are aware of the looming debt and are actually thinking logically instead of selfishly trying to oppose something the people don't like just to save their public image. I, too, hope that tax raises will also have some success (I'm not sure how qualified my opinion is, since I don't pay taxes), because our state needs to pull itself out of debt if we want California to flourish.

March 16, 2011 at 10:45 PM
michele mao said...

I guess passing budget cuts is a good thing because it can help out the debt but I feel bad for the people who were benefiting from the programs such as people with disabilities since the funds were used to help them. Even though people of different parties do have different views, sometimes they need to put aside their views and beliefs in order to make decisions that are beneficial to the country which I think happened since they passed it through the Assembly and Senate pretty easily.

March 17, 2011 at 12:25 PM
Christina said...

I think the unfortunate reality is that severe cuts like these are no longer optional in California and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the necessity exists for severe cuts to keep governments from closing due to a lack of capital, and our state is no exception. I have to say that the Democrats made a smart decision to compromise on these cuts, especially since the probability of their loss of support in our wonderful state is slim to none. On the flip side ,the Republican level of support are typically low; I hope that they decide to compromise on taxes in an effort to do the right thing and possibly gain votes as a result. (Likelihood?) Like I said, the reality of our contemporary country is that cuts similar to this will be commonplace and necessary.

-Kathy Shield (from a friend's account)

March 19, 2011 at 10:24 AM

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