"This budget is not worthy of the State of California"

[deek]

excerpt from:
CA DISABILITY COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK
CAPITOL NEWS REPORT - ISSUE #91-2004
Linking people to disability rights Website now up: www.cdcan.org
May 18, 2004 - Tuesday evening

(hightlights mine)

SUMMARY OF KEY COMMENTS MADE BY SEN. BURTON AT 5/13 PRESS CONFERENCE
Sen. Burton: "This budget is not worthy of the State of California. The Administration claim that they want to maintain critical support for California's most vulnerable citizens - those who are risk - and want to recognize children as a priority. Yet we take about a half a billion dollars away from the poorest children in the state, those whose parents are in the CalWORKS programs. Those kids whose parents or parent in most cases are following the federal law, following rather ignoble welfare reform put in place by President Clinton and in this state, see the money taken away from them that they so desperately need.

In addition to this, not just taking away cost of living increases, reducing the grant money - which is low, but in addition to that, when the parents do go to work - when they get a job, and they go to work, but we still, because they are still at such a low level, trying to protect the children we limit those grants. These people, when they go to work, have to pay for child care. They have to do certain other things that they are trying to accomplish to get out of the welfare morass into a productive role as taxpayers and contributors in society, and we make that more difficult. CalWORKS is not what caused the budget problem.

The people are doing what we asked them to do - not what we asked, but demanded that they do in the program. And they shouldn't be harmed by a budget problem that is no fault of their own."

Sen. Burton: "Then we take 1.2 million elderly, blind and disabled in the state - almost all of whom cannot work to make up any grant reductions. And we don't want to give them not only any state COLA, but we want to steal the money that the federal government gives them through the federal COLA pass through. This portion of the budget is absolutely unworthy of a great state, unworthy of a governor who does have compassionate - and concern for those less fortunate then he is...and those who are less fortunate than others. These are things that we are going to look very hard at, and in my opinion, I am only one of 120 members of the State Legislature, but, my mother didn't bring me into this world to pick on poor people in order to solve problems that were not created by them.

There are other parts of the budget that are basically are outside agreements. Some of you people in the press don't fully understand the legislative process. But in reading the paper you seem to think that if the Governor and an outside group make a deal, then all of a sudden then that's a deal, and the Legislature's been by-passed.

Well, as I've said downstairs time and time again, you can't go to the initiative ballot to get budget through. We can't be by-passed. We are the ones that deal with the budget. The Governor proposes a budget. We dispose of a budget. We are the ones to take the budget, work our will, up, down or sideways - and send it back to the Governor, where the Governor can then deal through his veto power with a blue pencil, to reduce the amount of funding basically that he is legally entitled to do.

So I view all of the deals that have been cut as a suggestion from the Governor in the budget, just like the suggestions would have been made without these deals. The only thing that they do, is if the Legislature did decide to do something about K-12 education and followed the Governor's cuts in that or deferrals in that, that it is clear that the teachers organizations are not going to argue about that. So I mean it kind of gives one a pass there. On the higher ed stuff, I think here is great concern in our caucus about that. And as I have said, there is a deal between the Governor, and I guess the presidents and I guess, the regents and the trustees. And the only ones that really has concerns about this are probably the students, faculty and parents of the students, which probably total more than you know, the trustees and the regents of the universities. We have a concern about that.

We do understand exactly why these deals were made. Don't necessarily agree with them from the standpoint of the university system and the state university system making them. It is absolutely clear in my judgment, that unless the State hits the lottery or maybe goes into partnership with the Tribes and some of the casinos, to get a lot more revenue in, that we're not going to be solving the State's fiscal problems. We are delaying them, and sometimes by delaying a problem, you get to solve it later in an easier fashion. And sometimes delaying a problem it gets worse.

Political decisions if you put them off long enough, you find out most them take care of themselves. Unfortunately that's not necessarily true with fiscal problems, but we'll just have to see. I do look forward working with the Governor to try to deal how we're going to rectify our differences of opinions on this fiscal approach. But sooner or later we are going to have to deal with the structural change. I don't think anybody of any great intellect believes you can cut your way out of a structural problem...."

Question: "Will you or your caucus push for a tax increase?
Sen. Burton: "Why would one push further - I don't really know what I'm going to do on that. I mean, I want to do this, and he isn't going to do it, so he's standing up there doing nothing. We're just going have to see what balances what and what the great need is. I'll tell you, you know the amount of money that was given back to the VLF was four times plus what this budget takes away from the poorest people in our State. And we wouldn't be in the toilet we're in today but for that. I understand, I told the Governor today, I understand, you know, what he said in the campaign he was going to do it. As a person if he says he's going to do it and he's going to do it and he did it. But that $4 billion plus, much which went to people who didn't need the money because the bulk of it went to people with expensive cars, and you don't necessarily see a lot of poor people with expensive cars.

What are we doing? We're screwing the poorest of the poor to pay for a tax break much of which went to the wealthy. It goes against my sense of fairness if you well - as skewed as it might be."

Question: "There has been a lot of talk about an on time budget and "
Sen. Burton: "Oh yes, very important We had three in the past twenty years. Yes, vital"

Question: "Will you take a lot at what's best for the state in terms of pushing for a better budget if its necessary to pass a deadline. How do you weigh getting an on time budget against..."
Sen. Burton: "Screwing poor people, taking food out of the mouths of kids, elderly, blind and the disabled? Not much.

If the budget is going to be three weeks late, and we're going to protect the most vulnerable in society, the world will little note nor long remember that three weeks. I would remember for the rest of my life seeing old people going into the store that don't have pets and buying cat food instead of tuna fish. So, on time budgets are very helpful - in the press. They mean nothing in the outside world. In the press it looks good, because, if you go down the street the budgets late - aren't they always late? We've had, since I've been in Sacramento, I think two really on time budgets. And that's when we had surpluses. When you're in the shorts, it takes more time to do it. I would hope we would have a budget that is on time. Let me tell you, the money markets and the bond markets are going to look at whether or not its a sound budget. They would rather see, in my judgment, a sound fiscal plan that was five days late, then an unsound one that was ten days early, I would think."

Question: "Senator, are you at all relieved or happy to see the restoration of that he put in from January, especially around Healthy Families and Medi-Cal?"
Sen. Burton: "They should have never been taken out. Why should I be happy about something that got fixed that never should have been broken?

Sen. Burton: Healthy Families is good. People make money out of Healthy Families, not a lot - the health providers and everybody. Nobody is making money off of some kid of a mother whose husband has either left her or died, or even could have died in the gulf war and hat person is in the CalWORKS program, nobody is making off of that kid, except maybe the corner grocery store, you know, if their grant is not cut. Nobody is making money out of elderly, blind, or disabled person who gets their full grant, except maybe the tuna fish people versus the cat food people.

You know, it's nice that he didn't do what he shouldn't have been done before. I mean you're not going to get a lot of props from me for doing that. I mean I'd like to congratulate people for not robbing that banks and not running over people in the cross walks too".

Question: "The restoration of the health and human services do you think there is still too many cuts in the budget?"
Sen. Burton: "Well, Anybody with any brains would think so. I don't think that is a novel thing. When you knock $500 million out of the pockets of the poorest people of the state or more than that, counting the elderly, blind and disabled, about $700 million, yeah, I mean, whether there are cuts in that. To have the poorest of the poor pay what basically was a tax cut for most of which went to wealthy people with very expensive cars, seems to be alittle bit weird. Doesn't send the right message about California or America. Doesn't say much about our values."


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