Reagan Will Address State Legislature on Budget Crisis

Former President Ronald Reagan will lecture the California Legislature next month on how to resolve the state’s $12.6-billion budget crisis.

The announcement that Reagan will address a joint session of the Assembly and Senate on May 6 was greeted with some skepticism by Democratic lawmakers who note that the former President left the nation with its largest federal budget deficit.

Bill Livingstone, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, said he saw no irony in the topic Reagan selected. It was Congress, controlled by Democrats, that appropriated and spent the nation into its deficit, he said.

“He (Reagan) tried to cut spending. It was the Democrats who refused to cut spending,” Livingstone said.

As governor in 1966, Reagan faced a deficit and presided over a budget compromise that included a $1-billion increase in the state’s income tax.

Reagan was invited to the Capitol by former Assemblyman Mike Roos, a Los Angeles Democrat who resigned last month to head an educational organization.

Roos said he played golf with the former President last month, before leaving office. “I thought it would be a nice thing to do. It was basically a courtesy,” Roos said.

“He is a former governor of California and former President, who when he served was probably the most popular President since Franklin Roosevelt,” Roos said.