California budget an assault on working people

After the longest-ever budget delay, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a budget containing $10.3 billion in slashed expenditures and $9.6 billion in revenue-related measures. The “solution” to the 85-day impasse impacts primarily workers and poor people and virtually guarantees future crises by deeply cutting into revenue reserved for subsequent fiscal years.

Gov. Schwarzenegger cut an extra $510 million from the budget that will hit working people hard.

The budget deficit was reported to be $15 billion. Throughout the legislative debate over the budget, the capitalist media outlined there would be cuts in education, Medi-Cal and other health services, transportation services and the prison system, along with closing some loopholes that benefit the rich and businesses.

The extensive cuts to social spending proposed by the legislature apparently failed to meet the governor’s standard of “fiscal responsibility.” According to the California Budget Project, Schwarzenegger made an additional $510 million in cuts through line-item vetoes—including $13 million from local public health activities, $13.2 million from several Department of Aging programs, $20.3 million from substance abuse prevention and treatment, and $862,000 from child nutrition programs.

Among other anti-worker measures, the final budget cuts $3.3 billion from “base” K-14 education, increases Healthy Families Program premiums by 50 percent for low-income families, and reduces funding for county operation of the Food Stamp and In-Home Supportive Services for seniors by $35.9 million. All of this may only be the beginning—Schwarzenegger secured powers to unilaterally impose additional mid-year cuts.

If attention is paid to the big-business media, the average worker will feel there is no other solution to the deficit. We are supposed to accept that the budget cuts for social spending are necessary; that the politicians can offer no other solution, and that we will be heading for a crisis further into the future at a time when more draconian cuts will be needed.

The California budget crisis, which is intertwined with the fast-growing national economic crisis, exposes the real role of the federal, state and local governments in the United States. Though elected by the people, the vast majority of whom are workers, the legislature and the executive offices represent and operate in the interests of the capitalist class, which are the owners of the banks, factories and the corporations. The role of government is to protect private property rights and maintain economic conditions that enable Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Intel and other corporations to reap profits from the labor of the working class.

The stalemate in Sacramento was falsely portrayed in the media as one between free-spending Democrats and fiscally conservative Republicans, with a governor who demanded accountability. Behind the charade, both parties and the governor were united in making sure the working class bears the burden of the crisis, while the monstrous profits and wealth accumulated by the owners of banking and finance are not scrutinized and continue to grow. Schwarzenegger only demanded “accountability” from workers, children and the elderly for the excesses of the rich.

In all the discussions about what to cut and how to balance the budget, there have not been any proposals to cancel or impose a moratorium on paying interest on the debt to the banks. According to the California State Treasurer’s Office, that could have saved $5.3 billion—a third of the current deficit.

Such a moratorium would be a sacrilege against the church of capitalism. The California constitution prevents such heresies by mandating that payment on the debt is the first item to be paid ahead of any other expense, except for some educational items. It is a constitution written to insure that regardless of the amount of unemployment, poverty, hunger and human suffering, the banks get their share while people starve and go homeless.

If the working class had representatives in Sacrament who truly fought for our interests, they would expose this crime, demand an immediate debt payment moratorium, and call for a re-writing of the constitution that puts the needs of the people before the profits of the banks. If left to the legislature and the governor, the plight of the vast majority of poor and working people of California will only get worse. It will take a struggle by the workers and the poor to make the rich pay for the crisis they themselves created.