It’s about an hour till midnight and July 1st but California is now pretty much officially broke. The legislature passed a pseudo budget but it didn’t really fix any of the problems so the Governor vetoed it (something he’d said for some time that he would do) so we now have no budget and thus no money.
Most state vendors could start getting IOU’s as the budget crisis continues while state employees could see more furlough days.
Basically the problem is the same as always.
On the right you have a group of Republicans who refuse to accept any tax increases as part of the budget deal. As much as I dislike taxes the reality is we need to increase revenue, at least in the short term as we work to develop a long term solution.
I do recognize that the reality is these taxes will need to be focused on wealthier taxpayers if only because they can afford it. At the same time you can’t go too far or these taxpayers simply move away.
On the left you have a group of Democrats who refuse to consider the long term solution because it involves cutting pay and retirement packages for unions. Let me be clear that I am a strong supporter of workers but have real issues with the union bosses who haven’t ‘worked’ in years.
I am all for fair pay and retirement but when you’ve got people with 70, 80 or 90% pay at retirement it doesn’t take a genius to figure out things will quickly get out of control.
The Republicans are held hostage by right wing interest groups while the Democrats are held hostage by the big union bosses and thus not much gets done.