California Governor Jerry Brown just announced that California has a budget surplus!
No, that’s not a joke. I mean, it is a joke, but it’s not funny. After years of deficits as high as $25 billion, he says we’re now in the black—and to keep it that way he’s going to push back against the Democratic legislature that immediately wants to spend more money.
Instead, he declares, he wants to raise spending only…five percent.
“I am determined to avoid the fiscal mess that the last few governors had to deal with,” Brown told reporters as he introduced the budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year beginning in July.
Alas, the budget that he contends is in surplus is based on projections of expected revenues, not on revenues themselves.
The state expects $98.5 billion in revenues and transfers and plans spending $97.7 billion, according to the proposal published on the state Department of Finance website.
The problem, as I pointed out here the other day, is that California’s own controller says that actual revenues are coming in nearly 11 percent below expectations.
So let’s do the math. California adds five percent to current spending that’s already in deficit and brings in 11 percent less than projected….
Nah, never mind. Trying to figure it out makes as much sense as denying a condemned man a cigarette on the grounds that it’s bad for his health.
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Comments
Oh, please, Mr. Engel, you know we don’t like math! Why do you keep asking these math questions?
On a positive note, if CA GOP get testicles the rest of the GOP seem to have misplaced, they can spend the next decade beating Brown and CA Dems for turning a surplus into a deficit.
The low information to non information voter will read about in on their Obamaphone and wonder what the hell “deficit” means.
California voters, math and big words… bad combination.
You assume too much. First, don’t assume they can read. Second, don’t assume that what those who can read is English.
What do you mean, broke? I’ve got a whole book of checks left!
Looks like a deficit for 2013 of roughly $15 billion – assuming the economy in California doesn’t get even worse. Of course we all know that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption.
On a slightly different note, I’ve always thought Brown was just crazy and more than a little bit stupid. But this budget shows another (not at all surprising) trait in that it is fundamentally dishonest.
From my point of view, Moonbeam may be counting his revenue chickens before they hatch.
After recently launching the State’s new and burdensome Cap and Trade Program on California’s emissions producing industries, substantive revisions in the State’s Corporate Income Tax methodologies (intended to produce more revenues, of course) now lay just ahead and I seriously doubt that either is going to produce the new income the ‘crats are counting on so much these days.
But what the hey, it’s not all bad … at least Jerry has yet to resurrect his California Space Program that he proposed back in the 70s so that he could have his own private Telestar satellite up in orbit. Yup, it’s all just incense, peppermints, and unicorn farts in The (slightly tarnished) Golden State these days.
In fairyland, government math is irrelevant — government money comes by magic, after all.
Californians, almost to the degree of Hollywood types, live in a cult. It’s only a matter of time until the poison Kool-Aid gets passed around by Governor Jim Jones.
Joel: You beat me to the punch on this. More details on the numbers can be found here, including the fact the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected a $1.9 billion deficit for 2013-14.
A good article states that its seems economic assumptions in Brown’s budget summary include:
* Better real estate conditions;
* California’s housing market in recovery;
* Employment gains improved. The reason listed for this is that “23 of 28 metropolitan areas added jobs” — but these were mostly government jobs;
* Consumer spending improvement.
You and I both know how off these projections will be at the end of this year.
More details: http://www.calwatchdog.com/2013/01/10/gov-browns-new-budget-seeks-to-equalize-the-unequal/
Progressives should never be trusted with money or rights.
Time for some Stoned Ponies.
…. harnessed to a blue Dodge….. with the first public employee unions leading the way.
Who you gonna believe? Democrat predicted revenues or actual revenues?
Surely inflating expectations of revenues will work …
… just like Obama’s idea of proper tire inflation made us energy independent like he said.
You gotta think outside the reality box.
Sorry to be mostly off topic, but the headline made me do it.
If you’ve never seen the Jimmy Stewart movie, Anatomy of a Murder, please correct that. It has what I believe is one of the best courtroom scenes of any movie. Maybe not THE best, but in the top 5 for sure.
(and a young Lee Remick…va va va voom!)
Oh, yes! One of my all time favorites. Haven’t seen it in awhile, will have to catch it again soon. And Remick was smoldering in it.
not to worry: we here in Failifornia will find a way to make this turn out worse than any projections.
it’s our one remaining industry. hell, we’re even trying to drive off the pr0n business.
I am an employed denizen of the Golden Shower State. The state is being run for the benefit of tax consumers, who grow in numbers every day. Tax payers are at best sheep to be sheared or increasingly, run out of the state. I can’t begin to tell you how disheartening it is to live here, as someone who has been here over fifty years, as the state has been methodically and deliberately run into the ground. Family circumstances do not allow me to leave at this time, but I would if I could.
I lived in that once-magnificent state all my life. I, too, have watched it devolve into a third world gestapo shithole. It’s so bad there, I really could cry for what it once was. California has been completely defiled by the left.
We finally escaped to eastern TN a year ago. I can’t tell you how much better life is now.