Bill Saracino penned an excellent column in California Poltiical Review urging the Governor to drop his support for the California Live Within Our Means initiative and embrace the John Campbell/HJTA spending limitation measure instead.
Saracino is absolutely correct in his assessement that Live Within Our Means -- backed by the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable -- is a "toothless tiger." Schwarzenegger's decision to support it over the Campbell/HJTA measure is deeply disappointing.
The Orange County Register re-published Saracino's column today, and here is a blog posting by OCR editorial writer Steve Greenhut echoing Saracino's assessment of Live Within Our Means:
So now the governor has, unfortunately, embraced the spineless Chamber-backed "California Live Within Our Means Act," which will do close to nothing to limit the growth of government. Sen. John Campbell, R-Irvine, did all that he could to convince the governor to embrace a real cap on government spending, tied to population growth and inflation. But, at the end of the day, the governor sided with the mushy liberal business Republicans who love big government, provided the costs are borne by the average citizen rather than the business community. The budget limitation the governor is now supporting is worse than nothing because it gives the illusion of budget limitation without doing much budget limiting. The Left will use it as a pretext for raising taxes because government spending will still outstrip revenues. Liberals will say: "Look, even after a severe budget limitation, we still have deficits. The only solution is a tax increase."
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