Lack of a State Budget Will Take a Heavy Toll

Re “Amid Dire Warnings, State Again Misses Budget Deadline,” July 1: Make no mistake about the budget crisis. We could have passed a budget a long time ago if passage required simple majority rule. However, thanks to our ridiculous Constitution, our state is being hijacked by a bunch of right-wing Republicans who will either rule California or ruin it. As a result, schools, emergency wards for the poor, medical care for the elderly, special programs for the handicapped, libraries and state colleges and universities will shut down. Teachers and public servants will lose their jobs or face massive pay cuts. College students dependent on Cal-Grant scholarships will have no money for college and tuition costs will skyrocket through the roof.

And this is only a beginning. Once Republicans seize power, forget about clean air, environmental protection, worker safety regulations or minimum wage, for starters. Next will come county hospitals, public transportation systems, libraries and public schools. Why should the Republicans or the wealthy care about such “expensive, wasteful institutions”? Worse, amid this disaster the Republicans want to stage a coup d’etat (i.e., a recall) and set up a utopia for the rich and a banana republic for everyone else.

For permitting this catastrophe to occur, Californians deserve a 3-D award: dumb, dumb, dumb.

William Joseph Miller

Los Angeles

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After reading “Blame Bush in State Fiscal Crisis,” Robert Scheer’s July 1 commentary blaming President Bush for the California economic/budget problems while ignoring all the real, more-local causes of the problems (as in businesses leaving the state due to too-high taxes, too much regulation and too many incompetently handled expenditures allegedly for the benefit of the public), one is reminded of the old adage that the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic is that the former builds castles in the sky, while the latter lives in them. I fear that Scheer has finally crossed the threshold.

Richard Becker

Valencia

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The current California financial crisis and self-serving Bush energy policies show a lack of political vision. Friends of George W. manipulated the California energy market and Gov. Gray Davis panicked and purchased a bad deal. The Bush administration has no real energy policy other than use up our resources and let someone else solve the problem.

A system of car registration that rewards higher-gas-mileage cars should be implemented. People who purchase cars with better gas mileage and use less of our energy resources should receive a better deal.

Andrew R. Einhorn

Huntington Beach

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Re “Ho-Hum ... What Crisis?” editorial, June 30: You offer a number of cogent suggestions to deal with both the short-term and longer-term aspects of our state’s disgraceful budget crisis. It seems clear that Davis and the Legislature have abandoned thoughts of structural reforms, but these are essential if economic sanity is to be restored. A number of short-run factors have contributed to the size of the current mess, but important structural factors have been at work as well.

Your editorial’s support for a special commission on structural fiscal reforms is well taken. The mandate of this commission needs to be quite broad to deal not just with tax and spending issues directly but also with the appropriateness of the political processes through which they are implemented and the relationships among state and local budgets. The inadequacies of the current institutional requirements for balanced budgets and penalties for failure to reach budget agreements on time have clearly been exposed. We desperately need a better set of enforcement mechanisms. What about a new requirement that failure to meet these obligations would trigger an automatic recall for the governor and Legislature? That might get their attention.

Thomas D. Willett

Horton Prof. of Economics

Claremont Colleges

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The Legislature has let the deadline pass without a budget. There is a way to assure that this doesn’t happen again. We need to get an initiative on the ballot that would vacate every seat in the Legislature if a budget was not passed by the deadline. The seats would remain vacant until the next general election. The legislators would not be missed during the interim because they don’t do anything anyway.

Robert Cole

Bellflower