Gov.'s Cuts to Hit Poor, Universities

[Judi Lynn]

November 25, 2003 E-mail story Print


THE NATION
Gov.'s Cuts to Hit Poor, Universities
By Evan Halper, Jeffrey L. Rabin and Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writers


SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected today to propose $3.8 billion in budget cuts over the next 19 months, including reductions in services to the poor and disabled, as well as in higher education programs.

The cuts, intended to help close a budget shortfall of at least $17 billion through mid-2005, would end art therapy for the developmentally disabled, scale back food stamp eligibility, reduce fees to doctors who treat Medi-Cal patients and eliminate recruitment programs at public universities. A draft was obtained by The Times.

Republicans who saw the cuts praised Schwarzenegger for taking the initiative to solve a budget problem that they said will only get worse with delay.

"It's almost like a necessary pain that we have to go through," said Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who will become Assembly Republican leader in January. "We have had a cancer growing on our budget and to cure this we are having to go through the chemo. It is painful, but we do have to shrink this tumor."

Democrats and advocates for the poor immediately vowed to resist the proposal, which will be presented at legislative hearings today and would cut roughly $1.9 billion in the current budget year and about the same amount in the 2004-2005 budget. They criticized the proposal as targeting low-income Californians to generate money to compensate for the $4-billion car tax cut that the governor signed into law Nov. 17. (snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cuts25nov25,1,6461574.story?coll=la-home-headlines

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[truthisfreedom]

1. dupe

[izzie]

2. The non-voters? Or the ones that have no big base.

Maine is the same. I think all states are doing it this way.Every one drives so you knock off that cost and pick on the little people who do not vote in mass. It is a 'smart' move if you are in power and do not care about the poor going to college and food stampes etc. You also have this problem. People do not want to pay any tax any more. I think it will have to go this way until people see what it is doing to their own standard of living and the intersructure of their own country. We tend to like our way of life and it takes a tax base to live like this.