Taxes, Budgets, States, & Government

California's budget shortfall is a fascinating though tragic example of State government programs, State law makers beholden to special interests and their lobbyists, and decades of good intentions & projects (benevolence) funded by the taxpayers of California.




Votes do matter and even though a vote 'For' a new initiative to 'help' people, animals, poverty, disease, "___"(insert favorite cause or issue), etc....may not cost much in the overall scheme of things when you start piling years and then decades of 'good things to do for _____' eventually they take on a life of their own (along with a budgetary requirement now mandated by the laws that created them, usually with no lattitude to adjust them in times of financial crisis).




These problems were forseen by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America and included in the Constitution of the United States to limit the largess of the Federal government on projects of dubious or narrow public value.


James Madison was quoted as saying & writing:



"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."


Unfortunately such spending, usually in the forms of earmarks, can be found in almost of bill or package of bills approved by the House and/or Senate.



It is slightly different when it comes to States, which have limited independence even now from the Federal government to pursue programs and projects that are focused on smaller or more specific areas of territory or groups of people. This was also understood and appreciated by our Nation's first leaders who had much better insight in many aspects (but certainly not all) of governance. James Madison addressed the issues of States and their lattitude to do much more than the Federal government:



"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."


States can do a lot on their own, even things that members of Congress can't get passed for the entire USA can be made into law (within State and Federal constitutional limits) at the State level. With this relative independence States have responsibilities. States not only in the figure of their Governer, but the State House and State Senate Representatives, Assemblymen, State Senators, etc... need to take responsibility for what they do now and what their legislative bodies have done in the past. A recovery is projected as noted below (but a major recession, loss of revenue, and budgetary insolvency was not????).


Reference: http://www.lao.ca.gov/





The role of the Federal government is not to bail out State governments and State Legislatures who throw away, waste, or spend indiscriminately their resident's tax contributions. Those who actually create, write, modify, amend, and vote to pass the laws that the State government and the Governer are obligated to follow are those ultimately responsible for the 'mess' that States, particularly California at this time, are in right now.