Thanks, that was about the level of a response I expected. But at least you tried. A deficit is the difference between revenues and outlays for a budget in a given period, usually in the context of a year, where outlays exceed revenues. A surplus is when revenues exceed outlays in a give year. A balanced budget is when revenues and outlays are the same. The debt is roughly an accumulation of deficits and surpluses in the past, though governments can borrow money for long term projects irrespective of their budget. The level of debt has no bearing on whether a government may have a deficit, surplus, or balanced budget for a given year; except that the interest paid on debt in a year is an outlay for that year. Governments thus can, and do, have deficits, surpluses and balanced budgets for any given year and still have debt. A government can have $20 billion or $20 trillion in debt, but if in the given year its revenues and outlays are in balance, it will have a balanced budget.
California has the highest state income tax in the country, it is over 13 percent. They took a long time to get a budget surplus.
Brown is already targeting the 'surplus' for high speed rail. In other words, there will be no surplus when they are finished spending.
It's a national highway. That would fall more on the sequester matter. Ask your Republican Tea Party friends about it.
Having read my posts why do you think i am multiple people? Perhaps that explains your posting recently!
You only have a surplus when all your bills are paid and California is far from doing that. It would seem like Democrats need to take a few more courses in college. What California has is a house of cards. Jerry Brown, soon to be Californias longest-serving Governor, is obsessed with his legacy. Legacies, however, are judged retrospectively. For now, Brown has been receiving much credit nationally for balancing the budget. In truth, the budget is not really balanced and Brown is setting California up to fall like a house of cards. Jerry Brown certainly is having a good year in the media. This year, PBS told us: Gov. Jerry Brown Makes Tough Choices to Balance State Budget. The Atlantic recently heralded: Californias New Problem: Jerry Brown on the Sudden Surplus. Even BusinessWeek proclaimed that Jerry Brown had Scared California Straight and that Jerry Brown Stays Stern on Californias Budget Surplus. Brown has received such praise in connection with the California budget process this year, and the ruling Democrats self-proclaimed budget balancing. The real score in California, however, demonstrates that the budget is not really balanced and there is nothing but trouble ahead. First, to use Jerry Browns own words, California has a wall of debt, which doesnt include unfunded pension and medical liability and that wall of debt is NOT included in the budget. The total amount of that debt is somewhere in the $27 billion range and includes over $10 billion owed to the federal government. That money was used to fund Californias Unemployment Insurance Fund, and California seems to have no plan to pay it back a sort of reverse unfunded mandate, if you will. The fact that California began borrowing that money in 2009 demonstrates the fallacy of the prior claims of balanced budgets. The fact that it is kept off budget, like the other debt mentioned above, demonstrates the fallacy of the 2013-14 budget. Of course, California has far greater debts than that. One study showed that California governments are over $1 trillion in debt. Most of that is in the form of unfunded pension and medical liabilities owed to state employees. Californias Legislative Analyst told Brown and the Democrat-run legislature to increase the contributions to the states teachers pension fund by a paltry $4.5 billion to address its announced $73 billion short fall. The new budget, which includes a call for an increase in spending of 26.2% over the next four years, ignores the Legislative Analysts advice. Keep in mind that the main public employee retirement fund is said to be underfunded by $329 billion and that the unfunded medical benefit deficit is said to be $64 billion in the red. The latter figure, according to Brown, is expected to grow 59% in the next four years. If you ignore all that, then California has close to a balanced budget. I say close because, in fact, the so-called balanced budget steals (sorry borrows) $500 million from the States cap-and-trade environmental emission reduction program. Browns budget does that even with the recently passed, retroactive tax increase that produced higher-than-expected revenues. Add it up and you find that the budget really isnt balanced and Brown hasnt really made any tough choices. Brown isnt alone in that distinction. His predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, promised to blow up boxes of government waste and, if I recall correctly, there were no such explosions. Of course, it could be worse. The Democrats in the legislature actually wanted to increase spending more than 26.2% over the next four years. While we are looking at numbers, consider these: California has the highest income taxes in the country, the highest gas taxes, the most regulations of any state and surprise the fourth-highest unemployment rate (which, as every serious person knows, is understated). The latter is a real feat when you consider Californias natural resources including oil reserves which could easily be a big part of the answer to many of Californias economic and budget problem. See my Forbes article: Californias Anti-Fracking Ideologues Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth. In the final analysis, instead of addressing those runaway deficit freight trains headed Californias way, Jerry Brown is bent on funding High-Speed Rail in the Golden State to establish his legacy. Interestingly, the yearly budget for high-speed rail is larger than the amount California Democrats appropriated for the California State University system which tells you a lot about Browns priorities. Speaking of legacies, the one of Browns father, Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., was the improvement to the states educational system made under his tenure. Jerry Browns legacy will be the gamble he took with our budgets and high-speed rail both of which more accurately represent a California house of cards http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasd...s-atop-californias-collapsing-house-of-cards/
Taxcutter says: Yes we do. More objective and honest than ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and HuffPo.
That just says he still supports the high-speed rail project. It says nothing about planning to use the surplus to increase spending for it.
I agree many of us need to take some courses. You can have a surplus despite debts. Let's say you buy a house, with a 30 year mortgage. And let's say your income is enough so the mortgage payment is not a strain, and you have money left over every month. Do you have a surplus? Yes, you do. Are you in debt? Yes, you are. In fact, if you ever hope to pay off your debt, you REQUIRE a surplus! That's what debts are paid off with.
According to the article, California isn't even making min payment to the government on their health care costs. I can agree to a point of the pensions, where they are making some payment on that. But it sounds like they plan to stiff the government on health care and not even try and pay the billions they owe.
It's now been more than 14 hours. Every one of the people I quoted is on the site right now, but ... crickets.
Maybe someone should explain to this guy how the budget process works. What's ironic is that we have conservatives here ranting and raving that California has shifted money to special funds and to local government, which exactly the same thing that Chris Christie did in New Jersey and Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. But,as even the commentator in the Bee noted, at least in California, they shifted both the obligation AND the cash to pay for it. That's not what's been happening in a lot of states. Others have commented on the unfunded pension liability. That issue is nearly universal in state and local government. Anyone who thinks California or Gov Brown is unique in that regard should look at the unfunded liablility numbers in various red states.
California's public finances have been in the toilet since the 1970s due to prop 8 and prop 13 and a republican minority holding the legislature hostage. The only reason the legislature could act was because voters, completely fed up with republican intransigence, finally gave the republicans the boot and gave the democrats the super majority necessary to deal with California's fiscal problems. This was the first legislative session in over 30 years to deal with decades to raise taxes and begin to get the state's fiscal house into some sort of order.
So you are saying California's debt is caused by the people voting to block gay marriage or that the highest taxed State in the union allowed the people to vote for a halt to the madness because of Progressive spending? LOL
And they did this AND expanded Medicaid and it sounds like they can cover with planning their share later on.
California's debt was caused by the people who voted for all that tough on crime legislation and then voted against any and all taxes to pay for it for decades. California's debt is caused by the people who voted to limit property taxes and then demanded that the police and fire department come when they call and the local schools educate their children and the towns and cities maintain the roads and water and sewers without them paying the rising expenses for these things. They somehow thought that if they just paid no taxes everything would be fine. Well, as it turns out everything did not come out fine. Before prop8 was passed California ranked first in public education. It now ranks 48th. Limiting the ability of local communities to raise property taxes has had a devastating effect on public education. Police and firemen and other public workers salaries and the cost of everything else has risen with inflation but the property tax revenues to pay for them did not so local governments borrowed massive amounts of money to pay for these things in order to keep their constituents satisfied. The state could not help out because its ability to raise revenue was also constrained and its revenues were being diverted to the mass incarceration of petty criminals. The reality of California is that it has spent the past thirty or so years trapped in a nightmare, a hostage of right wing manipulation that gave an ever shrinking minority control of the purse strings. California was an extremely successful and thriving progressive state until the right tossed a monkey wrench into the fiscal operations of state and local government. Since then it has been nothing but reduced services, deteriorating education and infrastructure and the need to take on debt to fund basic government services. Kansas is among the most recent victims of this sort of stupidity. The republican controlled government has run the state, which has always been fiscally responsible, into a massive debt problem in just four years through a combination of tax cuts and increased expenditures created by new legislative mandates. The governor and the entire republican legislature is in big trouble for being so fiscally irresponsible, the state could turn blue in the next election. Progressives may be tax and spend but that is better than republicans, who are borrow and spend. California has just recently paid off the bonds that the previous republican administration borrowed to fund its operating budget. In basic government finance it is anathema to fund the operating budget with borrowing because that is an indication that current revenues are insufficient and future debt service becomes less certain, raising borrowing rates.
California's debt is because they borrow money and pay interest rates on that money. The politicians don't have to pay it back so they spend with out a care. It don't matter left or right each has their own greedy agenda.
So, when democrats gained a stranglehold on the California Congress over decades it is still all the republicans fault for how much they spend? LOL
