Child Care Providers United of California Responds to Schwarzenegger's Budget Challenge

Arnold Schwarzenegger has invited Californians to try their hand at balancing the state's 2009-2010 budget by using an online tool provided by the Los Angeles Times.

By submitting to the limitations of the L.A. Times's budget tool and accepting the small range of options it serves up, Californians who wish to balance the state budget fairly and equitably would, by default, have to accept many of the spending cuts Schwarzenegger has already proposed in order to arrive at a balanced budget.

Child Care Providers United (CCPUnited) of California categorically rejects any cuts to education, human service, and health programs whose loss would negatively impact children and families who work for a living such as CalWorks and Healthy Families. CCPUnited also categorically rejects any and all tax breaks, tax credits, and subsidies that favor the wealthy and politically connected.

Nevertheless, CCPUnited of California has decided to participate in this exercise in order to show that revenues and only revenues will be able to right California's fast sinking ship of state.  Between $13.2 billion worth of new revenue solutions that polls show a majority of California voters support and $2.8 billion in cuts that fall largely on the state prison system, which polls also show a majority of voters favor, CCPUnited has managed to reduce the state's $24 billion deficit to just under $8 billion.

At this point in the experiment, it is apparent that it will be necessary to employ options that do not appear in the L.A. Times's interactive budget tool such as a carbon tax ($7.5 billion) and restoring the vehicle license fee (VLF) to 2% ($2 billion) in order to bring the remaining $8 billion shortfall in line with progressive values.

Read on for more details of our experiment using the L.A. Times's interactive budget tool:

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