The Governator's ambitious plan to "end" welfare in California has drawn a predictable response from Democrats in the legislature. Senate Democrats thought long and hard and came up with a great idea: raise taxes! Wow! that's just the sort of innovative thinking California is known for.
Assembly Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a plan to fully fund education and save welfare and government jobs in California by borrowing billions of dollars, just one day after Senate Democrats proposed raising nearly $5 billion in taxes to stave off cuts to the same social programs.
The proposal by Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, calls on the state to borrow $8.7 billion in bonds to be repaid over 20 years, plus interest, with a new tax on oil companies that would raise roughly $1 billion a year.
Pérez said his proposal would help the state's economic recovery by giving more money to cities, counties and school districts in the year starting July 1, investing $1 billion in job creation measures and avoiding the deep cuts to California's social safety net that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed.
You have to love Democrats. While they love to pose as populist defenders of the Little Guy, and go out of their way to demonize "banksters," they are perfectly willing to borrow money from those banksters, for whom cash strapped stated are a major source of revenue, and then stick the put upon Little Guy with the bill.
It's an economically absurd plan, of course. All this will do is "preserve" welfare for one year. That money is going to go into one hole and out the other with no net benefit left over in the end, except that leftists can pat themselves on the back for preserving "the safety net." To underscore the absurdity of all this, here is the collateral that Democrats proposed that we borrow against:
Pérez's plan would borrow $8.7 billion from Wall Street against the California Beverage Recycling Fund, which collects deposits on bottles, cans and other recyclable containers and is underfunded because of past raids by state officials.
The Recycling Fund? You mean those guys pushing shopping carts filled with cans are going to be responsible for helping pay down billions in debt? Wonderful.
California has approximately one-tenth of the nation's population, but it also has one-third of the nation's welfare recipients. While everybody, I'm sure, has a sad story to tell, the numbers say that many of these people come from other states (and countries. yeah, I'm looking at you Mexico) in order to find a more perfect welfare state. Are there any journalists in Sacramento willing to ask Perez and his supporters why in the world California should keep doing this? Doubtful. They would rather enable the Party of Debt's continued deprivations.
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