With just 12 hours left until California begins to default on its obligations to seniors, people with disabilities, students and small businesses, health care workers and community activists gathered at locations across the state to demand that Governor Schwarzenegger stop blocking a compromise budget package that meets his own test of "shared sacrifice." Several events took place simultaneously across the state in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno and Riverside, building public support for a solution to the budget crisis and calling on the Governor to sign the Legislative compromise plan passed in the Assembly Sunday and the Senate on Monday.
"The ball is now in Gov. Schwarzenegger's court to either live up to his words about shared sacrifice and compromise and sign the budget or bear the weight of California's fiscal meltdown squarely on his shoulders," added Eliseo Medina, SEIU-UHW Trustee and SEIU Executive Vice President. "The legislature has done what the governor asked by handing him a true compromise budget that asks everyone to contribute, including giant Oil and Tobacco corporations that can afford to pay a little more in taxes to help solve the budget crisis and protect children, seniors, and families."
Taking the "shared sacrifice" approach Governor Schwarzenegger has made the centerpiece of his budget rhetoric; the budget package approved by the Legislature makes deep cuts to education, health care, home care and other critical services and imposes small tax increases on big oil and tobacco corporations to protect seniors, kids, and college students from even deeper cuts.
But Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated that his idea of "shared sacrifice" is to force the entire budget burden on kids, seniors, people with disabilities and working families who can least afford it. He has refused to support a budget that contains his own previous proposals for modest oil extraction fees and insurance fees that would fund critical public safety services.
At the same time, in the final hours before the fiscal deadline, the Governor is attempting to hold the state hostage by demanding that the legislature pass additional policy changes unrelated to balancing this year's budget.
"If the Governor wants his legacy to be destroying the California we know, then he is headed down the right path," Medina continued. "He could still choose to be a part of the solution for our state and its people in during this economic crisis, but he'll need to change course today."
