EDITOR: I read Jeremy Borgia
’s letter about the “state deficit and how it will cause 35,000
teachers to lose their jobs”. He mentions that if we do not raise
taxes further we will raise a generation of adults who are
illiterate.
EDITOR:
I read Jeremy Borgia’s letter about the “state deficit and how it will cause 35,000 teachers to lose their jobs”. He mentions that if we do not raise taxes further we will raise a generation of adults who are illiterate.
Our schools have degraded from an institution of learning to one of state indoctrination. Jeremy as well as most people reporting on the current budget falls into the trap where a government reduction is really just a decrease in the growth of government.
If you look at the past four years our population and inflation have grown at a combined rate of 21 percent while California’s general fund spending has grown 36 percent. As usual our state government has been out of control in good times so there is nothing in reserve for difficult times. To solve the problem all that needs to be done is to truly reduce spending of all state agencies by 9.5 percent across the board, including the salaries of the, Legislature and governor. This would not be a hardship for anyone or any department.
If we did this for a year and then control spending to stay within growth and inflation limits there would not be a problem. If our legislators and governor had kept spending within the growth and inflation limits for the past four years we would have a surplus right now and not a deficit.
Remember government never met a give-away program they didn’t like in-order to buy votes, and unfortunately most voters don’t really bother to understand what our government is doing so that they can make an intelligent voting decision. They either vote along party lines, read the paper the day before the election to find out whom to vote for, and the majority of registered voters don’t bother to vote (what a relief).
Dale Matteson,
Morgan Hill
