SACRAMENTO -- Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) today unveiled the Assembly Democratic budget plan before the Sacramento Press Club.
“Our budget is not designed around political calculus, but around the real needs of our state,” Speaker Bass said. “We defined our values. And then put forward a budget blueprint that reflects those values. It’s exactly what families do when they figure out their budgets: figure out what they need and then figure out how to pay for it.”
The Assembly Democrats’ plan will require some cuts and some new revenues and relies on the Legislative Analysts Office’s revenue and property tax assumptions.
What the plan entails:
- Assembly Democrats make education the top priority, just as it is California’s top priority. The plan provides $2.3 billion more for K-14 education than the Governor’s plan, backfilling all proposed base cuts and providing a 1.6 percent cost-of-living increase.
- The plan upholds the safety net for children by rejecting the Governor’s cuts to children’s services and foster care, CalWorks grant reductions that hurt kids, the SSI/SSP federal COLA, Medi-Cal optional services, and the proposal to drop the salary for in-home support service workers to minimum wage.
- The Assembly Democrats’ plan also restores most of the Medi-Cal cuts made in February – upholding our pledge to restore them if feasible.
- Proposed cuts have been partially restored to Medi-Cal provider rates (cuts were passed in February, but don’t take effect until July), and partially restored to mass transit, which are devastating to working Californians as ridership soars and gasoline prices skyrocket.
- Assembly Democrats will also be making some extremely painful cuts that hurt real people. For example, the plan incorporates the suspension of the CalWorks and SSI/SSP cost-of-living increases, and accepts the Governor’s “summary parole” proposal.
- Assembly Democrats have modified the Governor’s lottery proposal, putting kids first and Wall Street second. The revised proposal secures the lottery, but excludes education funds so there are no risks to schools; funds from the securitization will be placed in a new “Debt Retirement Fund,” much of which will be used to pay down the debt. This fund will help us pay off budgetary debts several years earlier than the Governor’s plan and helps avoid out-year deficits created by borrowing. These debt payments include economic recovery bonds, transportation loans, education loans, local government mandates, and general obligation debt. Under our plan, most of these debts would be paid off anywhere from 3 to 10 years faster than they would under the Governor’s plan.
- The Assembly Democrats’ plan is fiscally sound. It has a built in $1.6 billion reserve with no accounting gimmicks. The plan also has the out-years in balance, with growing “rainy-day” balances in the existing Budget Stabilization Account – once again proving we don’t need to rewrite the constitution and give the Governor more power to balance the budget.
How these goals will be achieved:
- Assembly Democrats have said all along that we would not accept a cuts-only budget. We were encouraged that the Governor agreed with us.
- Assembly Democrats have also said that everything has to be on the table, and we’ve proposed several ways to increase revenues.
Speaker Bass continued: “The four legislative leaders have already begun meeting to talk about how we get to where we need to be to balance this budget with revenues. And I believe we need to start with closing loopholes and restoring the tax giveaways of past budgets, particularly for corporations and the richest of the rich Californians. That’s where the discussion will start, and I look forward to more of the productive discussions I’ve had during the past few weeks.” |