California lawmakers sent a $202.1-billion state budget to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, a spending plan crafted to erase a historic deficit triggered by the coronavirus crisis that relies heavily on cash reserves and a multiyear payment plan to meet funding obligations to public schools.the agreement reached between Democratic legislative leaders and the governor
The budget cuts $13 billion in state government spending from the previous year’s level, almost exactly as much in cuts as proposed by Newsom in the plan he presented to legislators last month. But it differs from Newsom’s effort in how those savings are achieved — relying on fewer spending cuts, more delayed payments to schools and optimistic projections of future tax revenues, and health and human services program costs.
Even so, the budget makes hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to higher education, court operations and housing grants. State workers will be furloughed for up to two days a month, part of an almost $2.9-billion cut to employee compensation. A number of planned expansions and changes to state healthcare services were scrapped. The budget leaves out the expansion of Medi-Cal to those 65 and older who lack legal immigration status, a key priority of some Democratic lawmakers.
Democrats praised the limited number of spending increases contained in the budget as key to protecting the state’s most vulnerable residents during the recession. Those boosts include extending California’s tax credit for low-income earners without a Social Security number and with children younger than 6, which would provide extra cash to some residents without legal immigration status.
One such provision in a public safety budget bill led to a lengthy debate on Thursday night in the Senate: an expanded definition of what constitutes an assault-style weapon in California. The bill’s language was tailored to include a specific weapon sold by a Nevada gun manufacturer that is not marketed as a rifle, shotgun or pistol and therefore not subject to the state’s existing restrictions.
“What this does is enables us to keep catching up with these manufacturers who are constantly trying to circumvent California’s [assault weapon] law,” she said. “Every single vote in a budget, whether it is dollars or words, is a policy act.”Others raised concerns with the public safety budget bill’s changes in prison sentencing, which includes redefining “elderly parole” as beginning in some cases at age 50 instead of 60.
Why is something wrong in CA?
My rose has ripened
So the solution to get out of debt is to spend more money? How does that work?