For a long time, no one seemed willing to call out the abysmal record and predictable failure of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship of California. Voted in on a wave of moronic, Bush-era fake-populist outrage against state deficits, Schwarzenegger came in with a lot of talk and no plan to fix the problem. It was obvious for a long time, but few seemed to grasp the implications for the state. Now it is easy to blame the governor–he has been one of the worst in the state’s history–but the problems unfortunately go much deeper: California is seeing the results of Prop 13 and its bizarre direct democracy model where all decisions seem to go through the ballot box without the cooling and compromise of legislative deliberations. This is what the state is facing, according the New York Times:
“Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, is threatening to eliminate the Healthy Family Program, the state’s health insurance program that covers over 900,000 children and is financed with state and federal money, as well as the state’s main welfare program, known as Cal-Works, which provides temporary financial assistance to poor families and a caregiver for the severely disabled. The $1 billion in cuts to programs for the poor would be met with $680 million in new cuts to education and a 5 percent salary reduction for state employees, many of whom are already enduring furloughs. These proposals, as well as those that would make cuts to state parks, the prison system and other state agencies, are winding their way through Sacramento now, where they will be voted on by committees and eventually the full Legislature.”
While the situation could be addressed by raising taxes, getting that through would be nearly impossible and it seems likely that California will see something like the unprecedented cuts that have been proposed.