CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWEST BUDGET
PLAN MAY ASSURE LONG-TERM RECESSION”
From the moment Gov. Jerry Brown
announced his latest budget revision proposal, complaints poured in both from
his political enemies and some interests that have usually supported him.
Republicans griped that Brown’s plan
depends on a November tax increase initiative to prevent several billion
dollars more in cuts atop the more than $8 billion he proposes. In-home care
workers complained that cuts to their program would eventually cost the state
far more than any immediate savings, as illnesses among invalid senior citizens
would go undetected until they’ve become cataclysmic.
The same sort of complaint came from
advocates of the Healthy Families program established more than 10 years ago by
then-Gov. Gray Davis to provide health care for indigent children. There was
also grousing from public employee unions, whose members’ hours will likely be
cut.
And there was the usual complaint from
the right that Brown didn’t depend solely on cutbacks to make up a projected
$16 billion deficit, instead pushing for his tax-increase proposition. An
attack on job creators, several bloggers called the whole plan.
The grousing from special interests
across the political spectrum missed the forest for concentrating on their
particular trees: This budget proposal does nothing to improve some of the
conditions that keep California’s unemployment rate well above the national
average.
There’s nothing in this budget plan to
make the state’s public universities more affordable, for instance. Yes, the
poorest students will still be able to get Cal Grants, but overall grants would
be cut by $38.4 million, essentially leaving out all but the very poor.
Meanwhile, the small (relative to its
costs) funding increase of $90 million for the University of California that
was planned in the January version of the budget is cut by $38 million. This
can only increase pressure for tuition and fee increases at a time when both UC
and the larger, but less elite, California State University system have already
raised student costs to levels where many candidates for admission find it
cheaper to attend private colleges. Within days of Brown releasing his revised
budget plan, UC Regents began discussing another 6 percent tuition increase,
which would be added to the 24 percent rise of the last two years.
The financial pressure on UC has
caused it to admit more out-of-state students than ever, in part because they
pay higher tuition. That’s one big reason a recent study concluded about half
the California high school graduates who would ordinarily be considered
qualified for UC admission are not going there.
How does this translate to continued
recession? CEO Magazine and others report that an educated workforce is one
major factor in business decisions about where to put new facilities and their
jobs. With most out-of-state UC students returning to their home states or
countries after graduation, California will be left with far fewer highly
educated prospective workers than it should have.
Further exacerbating this problem are
the constantly-rising fees and ever-smaller availability of classes at community
colleges. Similarly, there
is nothing in the latest budget proposal that takes aim at the state’s sky-high
dropout rate, expected to come in at somewhere between 26 percent and 32
percent in the annual report of the Department of Education, which was due out
in mid-May but has been delayed a bit, as usual.
Nothing makes for an uneducated
workforce more than high dropout rates, and this is one affliction California
has had for more than a decade, without doing much about it. Now those chickens
are coming home to roost, as older workers retire and many of the young people
who should be replacing them are simply unqualified.
Not that other places are much better;
dropout rates in Texas, for example, are similar to California’s.
Things would only get worse if Brown’s
tax increase initiative fails in the fall, as the last three tax-increase
propositions all have done. If that happens, $5.5 billion will be lopped from
state support for public schools and community colleges, $250 million each cut
from UC and the Cal States, not to mention more than $20 million in lowered
support for law enforcement and fire protection.
Police and fire protection are also
among the basic public services businesses check on when deciding where to
locate. They’re in for some cuts, too.
Brown may have needed to make
reductions like these, as he says. But in at least some cases, they will render
California less and less able to pull out of the current economic slump and
more likely to fall into new ones.
Given Californians’ penchant for
cutting taxes and public services, a trend dating back to the 1970s, it may be
appropriate to recall what both Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville
observed early in the 19th Century: In a democracy, the people get precisely
the government they deserve.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias
at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most
Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,"
is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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