California - we're even deeper in the hole

Tax revenue dropped almost $1 billion (yes, billion with a "b") dollars last month because so many corporations are struggling, Evan Halper reports. Which means California’s budget gap, previously estimated at $16.5 billion, will be even bigger. So what are our lawmakers doing?

Democrats have been calling for multibillion-dollar tax increases. Republicans have signed pledges vowing never to vote for new revenues, demanding instead that the budget be balanced with steep spending cuts.

If that sounds like an impasse, it is. Evan's full story to come.

--Veronique de Turenne

Illustration: Peter O. Zierlein

Comments

[SMS, a ca corporation]

If California lawmakers, from either party, believe that raising taxes for corporations is the answer to stuffing the spending vacuum that seems to have engulfed the legislature, the outcome will not be positive-it will be a disaster.
As a small business owner that has seen dwindling profits thanks to rapidly rising fuel costs and other related expenses, I can't afford to stay in California and operate a business, pay my employees, pay taxes (both secured and unsecured) and still have enough money to make the enterprise worthwhile.
So, hit my business with a tax increase and I will be forced to cut my employees from 10 to two- add those folks to the line at the unemployment office. Taxing businesses is the last thing that should be on anyone's mind- it is not the responsibility of small business owners to subsidize the state budget. I think I hear Nevada calling......

[susan]

All the Democrats every do is further tax/squezee taxpayers and businesses as things get worse, further driving the tax base out of California or into mutiny. But they raise salaries for union employees, refuse to cooperate with ICE in deporting the illegals -- even criminal gangbangers who murder freely in our streets -- and which cost us billions of dollars.

The illegal criminals alone are 1/3 the prison population, 80% of the vidious gangs like MS/Florencia 13 and 18th St.; 2/3 warrants for outstanding felonies; most of the hit and runs which raise our insurance rates and leave people victims; plus they infiltrate and recruit even at schools, and have many anchor babies and use many social services. These are many of the kids the gang intervention programs go for. Deporting them would cut billions from the budget.

This doesn't touch the rest of the illegals who are a net huge financial drain, whatever their proponents claim about some sales taxes they pay. They're 2/3 the schools and all youths, 2/3 the births (usually MediCal or uninsured), over 2/3 the users of county healthcare facilities like ER's and clinics, which are deep in the red and closing. So our citizens on hard times and elderly on MediCare can't get treated in timely fashion or not at all.

But the Democrats drive out business, want to put huge taxes on beer and plastic bags which many use for trash and recycle, but will now have to buy; try to force businesses to offer gyms and raise trash, Prop S fees, and want to hit us with an additional parcel tax for gangs (Janice Hahn) -- instead of sending them back where they came from as the vast majority of citizens demand. What if they took a poll and actually listened, for once?