John, thanks, but again, these are kind of meaningless for me. Was this growth characteristic of other states or even federal spending, or was it really out there? You suggested a link to population growth but why should this be a realistic measure? If the spending by these people is so absurd, why are they elected? It raises a lot more questions than it answers, but I can understand your aversion to making budgeting easier. 55% agreement in a diverse place like California–population-wise and geographically, to say the least–seems pretty small. But again, what are other states doing?
I think it’s incumbent on the spenders to explain to **me ** why this spending growth was necessary. I haven’t seen a good explanation. I use population growth as a first order correlation. I think that’s a reasonable assumption, especially since most of state spending is on schools and social services.
Well, yes, I think it should be their duty to explain why it is necessary.
That would be a very good idea, but CAoften had the same problem back before the 65%, and the Feds do the same thing nearly every year, and they only need 50%+1.
But when the Feds do it, the US government at least has the decency to shut down. Makes the problem last a mere few days. CA goes 4 or 5 months into the new fiscal year without any end in sight. IMO, a reduction in the necessary percentage combined with the incentive of “No budget, no pay” will have a similar effect.
Certainly there will be some trying to push through a severe tax hike, but, at least for the short term, cooler heads will prevail. The more intelligent legislators will realize that hiking the taxes on this electorate, currently feeling empowered enough to oust the governor barely a year into his second term just for looking stupid, might not be such a job-lengthening idea.
Not so much- the Feds just pass “continueing resolutions”. The "no pay thing- think about it- a nice % of the legislature is independently wealthy- they can “sit it out” and force the non-wealthy assemblymen into going along with what budget THEY want, or the not-so-wealthy dues have to default on their Mortages. Do we want those dudes who are wealthy enough to ignore a “no pay status” to be able to hold our legislature hostage?
Oh, and Skott- there won’t really be “cutting” anything from most budgets- if you view the budget in the cold hard light of reality. We had a few boom years (and thanks to John Mace for those figure)- and many budgets were increased for that flow of bonus revenue. But those years are GONE , and we simply can’t afford to keep spending like they are still here. All we have to do is go back to the 1999/00 spending days and all will be fine. We can’t keep spending like th edot.com boom is still going on. The schools, the prisons, etc- all just have to go back to 4 years ago, and live with that, and we won’t have to either raise taxes or borrow heavily.
Incidentally- I also have no problems with re-setting the taxes to what they were back then- including the car tax. That’s fair too.
I’m a democrat voting a big NO on this one. I can not see a compelling reason to amend the sate constitution. And this seems pretty transparent. It’s not about fiscal responsibilty. It’s about ending prop 13.
Making it easier to raise taxes will not encourage fiscal responsibilty.
And as for money for the schools: I can only speak about the LAUSD. There have been numerous bond measures passed for this and for that, and to build more schools, etc…
But the schools aren’t getting built. And the money isn’t going for this or that, but going for something else entirely. Plus, they have a 9 BILLION dollar budget to start with. The argument is always “if we don’t pass this bond measure, the kids will do without”. To which I respond “if we pass the measure, the kids will *STILL * do without”.
Prop 56 is a very scary thing.
Another Democrat here voting NO!
Like too many proposed laws in or out of the legislature, this one has a good idea (fiscal responsibility) poisoned by the addition of a bad one (getting rid of Prop 13). Some people, especially younger voters, have forgotten why Prop 13 was passed in the first place. Before Prop 13 the legislature was taxing retired Californians out of homes they had spent their entire working lives paying for. After Prop 13 they couldn’t do that anymore.
They are trying to sell Prop 56 as promoting “legislative responsibility,” but it will do no such thing. Why should the legislature be more responsible if we give them the ability to raise taxes easily to pay for irresponsible spending?
Bring me a proposition that forces the legislature to cut the pork and I’ll vote for it. Prop 56 just allows legislators easier access to the public teat.
How does Prop 56 get rid of prop 13?
It gets rid of one of the key provisions of Prop 13 (making it harder for the legislators to raise taxes) but not the real biggie (cap on increase in property taxes.)
Haj
I misspoke. It doesn’t “get rid of it” directly. It nullifies the provision of Prop 13 that changed a 55% vote on taxes to two thirds. It gives back to the legislature the ability to tax people out of their homes when only 55% agree. The promoters of Prop 56 are selling the “legislative responsibility” shtick because telling the voters that they were shooting down Prop 13 wouldn’t fly.
Just to add some data points:
This (Excel chart) shows the percentage areas where the general funding is being spent for the 2003-2004 budget. (hmmm… the chart shows the “general fund spending” as $62bn. Where’s the other $39bn?)
I’m not sure what I think of this document, but here (pdf) is a summary of the prop 56 changes from the California Budget Project, which claims to be a non-partisan analysis, for what it’s worth.
Here is another doc from the the CPB titled “Did California spend its way into the the current fiscal crisis?” which seems to argue that per capita spending in the late 90’s wasn’t out of control but fit historical levels. I find this less than convincing, since it averages the figures quite a lot over a long period, and I find per capita tends to obscure whether the capita has changed and in what way. It is an interesting point, however.
Personally, I think I’ll vote for 56. I don’t see any analysis available that shows that states that don’t require a supermajority have horrible tax situations, and I like the other provisions of the bill that encourage legislators to do their jobs in a timely manner, something that’s been more than lacking for the 15 years I’ve been observing this legislature.
If you slog thru this PDF file, it explains the General Fund vs other expenditures. The specific numbers vary a bit from your cite.
Thanks, John. That clarifies some of my questions.
Hmmm. According to this 1996 RAND corp study, only 17% of CA’s budget is discretionary spending, the rest is mandated spending required by law and/or the feds. I wonder what that percentage would be today? This would give us some of an answer to the cut expenses v. raise revenue debate – how much elbow room do we have to do cuts?
FWIW, the RAND paper above is a wonderful trip trough the wayback machine: it talks about the impact of a balanced federal budget on CAs finances. 
If they only knew what the budgets were going to look like these days. :eek:
squeegee:
During the recall election, it was a common refrain: “too much of the budget is mandatory. It can’t be cut”. I don’t know the exact %, but if we somehow got locked into **requiring ** the kinds of budget increases that have occured over the last 4 or 5 years, we’ve got bigger fish to fry in terms of reforming the budget process than this prop 56 issue!
Yes, I’ve heard that as well. I’d love to see some numbers to back up this claim.
It might be more enlightening to look at this as a fraction of GDP. During the period from 1993 to 2002, the U.S. GDP went up 59% (see Table 1.2 in this PDF file [warning: 2 Meg] of historical budget tables). These numbers show the budget went up 81% from 92/93 to 01/02…So, it was a faster rise. On the other hand, California’s GDP may have gone up faster than the national one. Does anyone know if there are actually figures on “California’s GDP”?
Here we go (pdf). California’s gross state product in year 2000 dollars:
year/millions
1992 831
1993 847
1994 879
1995 925
1996 973
1997 1,045
1998 1,125
1999 1,213
2000 1,330
2001 1,359
2002 1,509*
So, between 1992 and 2002, GSP went up about 81%. So it seems that the size of the budget is somewhat in line with GDP.
*the 2002 number was taken from here, which is in 2002 not fy 2000 dollars. Sorry, best I could do.
(oops, the caption on my precious table should have read billions, not millions)
And as percent of GSP, we get these figures:
1992 6.8%
1993 6.1%
1994 6.5%
1995 6.1%
1996 6.3%
1997 6.4%
1998 6.3%
1999 6.7%
2000 7.4%
2001 6.8%
(hmmm – the years don’t seem to line up – does fy 92/93 line up with GSP 1992 or 1993?)
I note that Proposition 56 went down to defeat yesterday, rather handily. The Republicans didn’t support it for the obvious reason; Democrats have controlled at least 55% of each house of the state legislature for some time, so the 66% vote provision on budgets is the only leverage the Republicans have to force Democrats to pay them any mind in years when there is a Democrat in the corner office.
I can’t wait to see this summer’s fun in Sackotomatoes as the Democrats in the legislature take on Governor Schwartzenegger on the budget. Best of luck, folks!