California Budget: No Tax, No Borrowing Agreement? Should we divert $ then?
107 Comments Published by clay September 13th, 2008 in State and Local Politics.Democrats back off on tax increases The current California budget (which needs to pass every year by July 1) is late. Very soon, the state of California cannot officially pay its bills, without the legislatures officially passing a budget. This is why over the past two months some state services have stopped. What is the major issue: How to close the $15.2-billion budget gap? Democrats want to close the budget gap by increasing taxes. While, Republicans want to close the budget gap by cutting spending and borrowing. The Democrats have the majority, but they need two-thirds in order to pass the budget. Therefore, they need some Republicans to vote for their plan. However, the two parties have not been able to reach an agreement. Here is the agreement
I think that the most biggest prioities that the state of California can utilize is the childrenand their edcuation. Because if you dont help support the children and their edcuation, then who will be the leaders, or more importantly how will the world be able to function without leaders that have proper edcuation or at least the tools for a proper edcuation. The whole basis of the children being our future has become a tired cliche that no one wants to hear anymore, but if the children are not edcuated then how can we expect to have a fully functioning society. The other biggest priority that the state of California has is the police force.
The police force is the basis of society, they are the defenders of everyone, they are the people who protect us from the dangerous things in life. If you think about it logically, all people rely on the police in one way or another, whether it is the weathly, using the police as a precautionary force or the poor and desolate who use the police as means of protection from the things that have been systematically introduced into their communities. Either way the principle of the law being the main force of justice through all of the social classes is evident in all cultures and in places in history you can see that the police force has been evident in making the world a safer place, and helping people.
As for the most wasteful governmental fund, I would have to say that it would have to be the state Horse Racing Board, because all that this board does is periodically check on bets being made in horse racing. I honestly think that checking up on bets being made in horse races do not help the community or help the state of California grow in any why, shape or form.
One of the largest sources of money being wasted is the State-Local Realignment which is essentially a program that just tells which counties what they can do for each fiscal year, and considering that this program spends $4,808,872 per fiscal quarter to operate, when it can just be substituted by an inter-county memo, I just believe that all of this money is circling the drain when it could be helping out California instead of being wasted.
If the California government must start to make cuts, then they should definitely not make cuts in education. One of the effects of a cut in education would be a bus system. Many children in California take the bus to school, and if the budget of education was cut, school boards would not have enough money to supply their students with busses. This would leave many students without a way to get to school on time. Another consequence of his cut would be the firing of teachers. If a school can not afford to pay all of their teachers, then the school will cut down on the number of teachers that our teaching there. This would put hundreds of teachers without a job of the hope of getting one for that matter. If all the school in California are making this cut, than the cut teachers have no where to go in their profession. As the cuts are made, the morale of the teachers will drop. This in turn could have negative effects on he students. Their morale to could drop, and then they would not do as well on tests, which in turn would make it very hard for schools to teach at the California standard of Education. For example, if all the senior teachers except Mr. Purther were cut, then he would have to teach the entire Senior class. He would not be to happy at having all the other teachers cut, and this in turn would make it hard for students to learn effectively from him since he is not teaching like himself.
Another cut that should not be made is in re-development. With cuts in re-development, new businesses will not be established in cities, blighted areas will remain dirty and rundown, and the economy will stay low. For instance in my home town of Covina, due to the cuts, Covina is estimated to lose over half a million dollars for re-development. This will prevent new businesses from starting up in Covina, and this will prevent new tax dollars from entering the cities treasury. More run down areas in Covina, such as the Western end of town, will not be able to go through any progress. With money for re-development, these areas could have the roads fixed, the buildings refurbished, and the landscape kept under regular maintenance. The area would then look a lot nicer, and more businesses would move there, thus increasing the tax dollars used to fund such re-development programs.
One big thing the government shouldn’t cut is education. This is something people our age are worried about right now. Soon we’ll be in college and many of us are worried about how we’ll manage to pay. Some of us have been forced to decide our colleges based on the prices. The last thing we need right now is an overpriced college class. If they cut education, it may fix the budget problem now, but when those kids grow up with a poor education system, we’ll all be in big trouble. Also, many kids would be devastated if their sports went away.
The second thing California should definitely not cut is the police department. It doesn’t take a genius to know that we need them. If they get cut, then crime will shoot up and California will be one unhappy place. It’s not just crime that would become a problem, either. Traffic laws will be completely ignored. Parking lots and freeways will become chaotic too.
If both of these things are cut, then many jobs will also be lost.
The first thing that the government should not cut would be health care/clinics. With there already being a cruel issues with health care not covering peoples needs and necessities, how in the world with health care be cut? If this health care had been cut in the 90′s, today, I doubt that I would still be alive. With myself back in that time needing a lot of medical attention then, I can understand how much people need today. Having to be in that position would seriously possibly bring down the population, fast.
The second thing that the government should not cut would be the police department. With the problem that California is having and more continuing, crime is going to rise immensely. Personally, I definitely see burglary to increase very much. I don’t mean just jewelry and money, but food and other basic necessities to survive. And on top of that there will be people fighting other to survive. If those two things are cut, California will be an extreme disaster.
So far, students have selected
(1) Education
(2) Health Care
(3) Safety (specifically the police force)
as the most important roles for state and local governments. Do you agree? What is more important?
If the state starts doing cuts, I for one believe in the people they should not cut the most important factors which is our education and our health care. When I was little I was raised to dream big and hold that dream and make sure I accomplish it but now with money issues on our hand, its going to be even more harder to get into a college that I desire. By this I mean classes are going to be smaller, expensive and prices for textbooks and accessories are going to accelerate. We as students have enough problems as it is from school, family, and money crisis so if this budget passes just imagine how even more difficult our lives would turn out to be now and in the future.
The people of California depend on one thing when they’re ill which is health care. Without it the state would perish. It’s not a major issue for the rich but for people in the middle class like me its a major problem when you need serious medical intentions. For example when I was 7 years old I had surgery that was fatal for my appendix that cost roughly about $20,000 which wasn’t the type of money we had in the bank but thanks to health care I didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing. So just imagine what health crisis California would be in if most of the population is in debt because most of us don’t have that kind of money.
I think the top two priorities the government should NOT cut out would be education. Education is so important in today’s society. To be able to support you alone and have a good paying job, it is necessary to go to college. For most married people when they divorce it is difficult, because leaving someone who helps with the bills and brings in the money can be very tough when first getting out on your own. How this relates to me is that I want to go to college. If they close down schools, it is going to be difficult to get a well paying job, since I want to be able to live on my own and still have left over money. In return, to having all that I need more schooling to get a job I really want that pays great!
The other big thing that should not be shut down is health clinics. We need doctors when we are not well. If someone is terribly sick, we need trained medical help! Even closing down the not as popular health clinics, is not good. Every one in the world needs health assistance. Then if health clinics start closing, who knows what virus will come out with no medical help. I have had personal experience with not knowing when something is wrong with me but being in so much pain that I have never encountered. I had kidney stones 2 years ago. I would have never thought I would have that, but thank goodness for doctors!
I do however think that we should pay off the 15.2 billion budget we have. Not by taking some of the most important things, we have in this world.
From my point of view, the state and/or government should be focusing on schools and teachers. People say so many great things about teachers, in my opinion teachers can mold students into being the best they will go. It is as if teachers pave a bunch of roads and it is up to us (students) to choose the right path to take, but teachers show us the way. Government money should be put towards schools. If people think so highly of schools and teachers then should they be put on a higher pedestal.
I’m with the republicans on this one. Anything is better than raising taxes. If taxes are raised, then more money comes out of my parent’s pocket, which means that I cant pay for college! It makes a big difference when you’re paying such a large amount of money like college tuition. If taxes are raised, then many families will no longer be able to afford the necessities such as food, bills, and rent. Theer are a lot of families that can barely afford to get by.
To me, the most important thing the government should not cut out is education. Its been mentioned many times from other students but they do have a point. Education matters. If there is another budget cut, then many schools lose teachers and staff. Classes will get tighter and the student-to-teacher ratio will go up. If this happens, many kids will not be able to get the full benefits of a proper education. This also puts high school students in jeopardy as well. The colleges and universities will lay off more teachers, there will be less classes, and the administration will be forced to turn down more college applicants
The 2nd most important thing we shouldn’t cut is the health care. I think many people do not fully understand the absence of proper, affordable health care. Most people havent experienced what it feels like to know somebody or be somebody who gets turned down when they seek medical attention.
For example, my parents are self-employed, which means they dont have a company that will pay for their medical expenses. Instead, they are forced to pay $800 a month for Kaiser medical insurance that doesnt even cover the basic expenses. They still need to deposit $50 every time they visit the doctor. Both my parents have diabetes so the medicine they need every month costs even more. I think that it’s pretty ridiculous to spend so much more money when you’re already paying $800 a month.
Another example, a family friend of ours-also self-employed- recently died because his family didnt have enough money to pay for doctor visits and insurance. Apparently, he had been skipping his check ups for the last 5-10 years and eventually found out a couple months ago, when he was rushed to the hospital, that he had been living with AIDS for the last decade. By then, it was already to late to take any medication. The virus had already taken over his body. My mother attended the funeral last week.
Law enforcement is also a biggie. If there are less cops on the streets, more crime starts to happen. There will be more murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies etc. To be a victim of such things is very unfortunate. It doesnt only affect cops and crimes. Firefighters will also be missing. If fire starts and there aren’t enough firefighters, its harder to get everything back to control which means more innocent lives will be lost.
The government SUCKS.
One thing that I think the government shouldn’t cut is health care or anything related with any clinic center that helps the sick or injured. If the government begins cutting on health care what is there to do if there any concerns that need the attention or help it needs. For example right now if we need any medical attention for any sickness or injury, we would be able to have help provided. If cutting down health care occurs it would affect many of us in the future and may cut down on the numbers in our nation.
Even though it’s mentioned above the second thing that the government shouldn’t cut is the education. Because without education students in the young generations won’t get the education they need for the future to become the leaders they want to be. Providing kids with the education they need makes them the kind of person they are now and the person who they want to be. Also it can influence them on being the kind of person they should be. And if they are in any extra school activities it shows them what kind of grades and goals they should meet if they want to stay in any sport team that they are a part of.
In addition I also think they shouldn’t cut off from safety including cops and such. Having protection around the city it can prevent crimes and any tragedies occurring on the streets. If there aren’t as much safety enforcements around the streets, misfortunes have a chance of happening like murder, rape, robberies, and etc. On the side note I think the government shouldn’t raise taxes because once they raise taxes there goes all our extra pocket money when we really need it for important stuff, like education or paying anything off.
One of the things that the state should NOT cut down on is education. Education should first and foremost be one of the most important things in California. Education is the foundation to our future, and without it, what would the future be like? We would be left in an even worse situation and in an unintelligent group of people’s hands. Although education may seem like the correct solution to higher officials at the moment, I don’t think they realize the full aspect of what the budget cuts have already caused.
The second thing that the state should not cut down on is health care. The price of health care is already high enough, and with the cost of living going up as well, people now-a-days cannot afford to receive proper health care. Our unhealthy eating habits and lack of daily exercise don’t help either. Our ways of living are causing more health problems, but people cannot afford to get help. And the people that do get help end up in dept to literally save their lives. Heath care is essential in our lives and if we were to cut down on health care, the average human lifespan would not be very long.
Don’t cut things, raise taxes. I think that we should try to raise taxes for a while just to come out of debt. To my understanding we are in deep debt. We aren’t really loosing anything by raising taxes. I understand that it is going to be more expensive to do just about anything, but what else can we do? Us as the people of united states dug our hole, so now we have to fill it.raising the taxes wont be a permanent thing, i think it will just be until we can get out of the hole.
However if California has o start making cut i do not think that they should cut health care nor should they cut education. Health care is used by everyone in the united states so why would they cute that? Having health benefits is clearly used frequently in the U.S. so why stop it? Secondly education cuts, that in my opinion is the worst thing to cut ever. Why? doctors who help you fell better attended school, the congress men and women who are in politics attended school, so us cutting education benefits is not a good idea. A good education is very important and cannot take anymore cuts. When the State cuts things from our education it is almost as if we the new generation is getting the short end of the stick.
It’s nice to see that so many of us treasure our education [or at least claim to]. Last year, I witnessed the results of school budget cuts. Every Young Scholar student had difficulty enlisting in courses, finally having to resort to physical classes worth only one unit. Budget cuts have definitely affected the amount of courses available to students, making graduating a much longer process. During the summer, Cal Poly sent a survey to its students asking for what classes they’d like to see the next term – all because they couldn’t afford to sustain all their courses. Seeing how hard it is to get a class now as a high school student, I can only imagine it might be just as difficult for the class of ’09 when we’re applying as college freshmen.
I hate be banal with my two choices, but I do believe that education and health care are California’s two biggest concerns. Health care could be so much better in the United States and other countries prove that. We lack the ability to provide free and quality health care to people of all classes, so the little we do provide should be preserved. The E.R.s, Urgent Cares, and clinics should be kept running for those who truly need it – those who we deny all other care.
The present detrimental debt is only going to effect our future; especially the way we keep putting it off. Although taxes seem to be the fastest way to close this gap, many people are unhappy with the effect it will have on their finances and I have to agree. Cutting out spending and borrowing seems to be a long-term plan that will only help after a good set of years. Some sort of combination looks best to me: recovering some money with a minimal tax increase while reprogramming our budget use by learning how to cut back on the borrowing and spending.
Im far from a politician and let me tell you the topic of politics is not my favorite, but to my understanding we are in deep debt and reading the prompt for this blog has made my mind wonder…I personally feel that we should raise our taxes,yes raising our taxes will make everything more expensive but it is what its, we’ve put ourselves in the position were in so now all we can do is get ourselves out.I do understand that the Democrats have the majority but 2/3 the vote require some republicans to side with the democrats and if for some reason thats not to happen,these cuts are going to be made. First off I dont think healthcare or clinics should be cut in any way whatsoever. Health care and clinics are neccessity to life,people oftenly go to the doctors just for headaches so what makes anyone think cutting this is the solution..?
second i believe that law enforcement should not be cut, i say this because without the law enforcement who’s going to make sure all continues to go well in society.i know some of us dont agree with some of the law enforcements protocol but they keep our society pretty well balanced..
Ok first of all i think one way to close this bum budget is by proposing cuts and taxing the rich for just a little bit as well as the corporations. They should increase the tax on the rich for a while and mainly raise the tax on medical corporations not the patients like kiaser permanente or the blue shield, because thousads of people are in tiffenney’s parents situation like paying hundreds of dollars a month and you still get the basic coverage, u know what i mean its insane. come on, have not we learned from micheal moores film sicko (we watched it last year in navarolies) these corporations are making bank. we have to put a stop to these monompolies. second the states top priorities are to cut on education, welfare, police force, increasing taxes by 9 billion bucks, increase state spending by 1.6 billion bucks, and direct discharge which for the those who dont know what it means, its when criminals who are out can go roaming the streets unsupervised without visiting their parole officers, and these guys could be murders. gangsters, baby nappers, taking over grannies houses and stuff like that kind of criminals, robbers and rapers as well. i doubt they’ll pass that one though. these are the states top priorities to my knowledge. i dissagree with others on stop the cutting budget fron law enforcement because if they lost police officer or gained police officer the crime rate would stay the same. (my oppinion).they should not cut welfare programs though, because people are all ready struggling u know, how are the lower class going to afford to pay the mortgage of their homes or rent and still yet their house bills. fourth i agree with the rest that they should not cut on education and after school programs becasue now is the time we need more support in the educational system because the student standard scores have dropped. the students need the education to make their dream jobs come true. we need the students to be succesful so that they’ll be able to miantain for themselves and in the future and make the world go round. next the shutting down of after the after school programs should not happen because some students dont have nowhere to go and its better for them to moderately learn how to do standard deviation than to learn how to succesfully jimmy a car. we dont want students learn how to be gangsters or thugs who nobody cares about. afterschool programs really help those who are willing and it gives them a positive attitude. have to go, bye.
What I think that they should do is carry out both of their ideas. They should make cuts in places that would not really have an impact or who can afford to lose some money and they should also raise taxes on people who have way too much money and can afford to give some of it up. An area that they should raise taxes on is the Indian casinos. Yeah you may say that this is how they are making a living or why raise their taxes but seriously I am pretty sure they can afford it. They are making millions and millions of dollars off of our money that we go and spend at their casinos so why not make sure they have enough money to pay their bills or do what ever they have to do and than take a small percentage of it from them?
A place where I think that they should cut money from(im not sure if they have one of these research facilities in California) research facilities that are trying to find more sophisticated and more advanced weapons that we can use in the army. Im fine with them trying to find more effective ways to detect IED or find a new material that can make an extremly strong body armor or any other safety research but they place that they should cut money from is developing more lethal weapons. Seriously the United States military force is already a very lethal and effective killing machine. They have the ability to pin point an object with a laser and than have a bomb drop on it from miles away. They have the predator aircraft that can spy and kill without the enemy knowing what hit them and lots of other things we probably dont even know about. They should keep up with the research to save lives but should stop on finding more advanced ways to kill people until our economy is where it should be.
Presently, the cost of day to day living has gone up a significant amount. People don’t go out as much, there is less spendings coming from the average families, gas prices are through the roof, and everyone hesitates to spend the money that they do not have. The government should do both things, cuts and raise taxes. We should make cuts in unnecessary things such as the people that push elevator buttons to get a certain floor, any person can do that. We should also raise the income tax. We live in the Los Angeles area. We have famous celebrities and numerous wealthy people living here. The income tax can be raised. This would make the living expenses higher and people woiuld have to suffer, but only for a short time, only untill we can get out of this prblem. The two priorities i feel are of the most importance are education and health insurance.
Education is the take off mat to the future. What is taught right now is what will be applied to fix future problems. It is these students generation that will have to fix all of these problems, so cutting education would be like shooting ourselfes in the foot. Todays students are the people who will lead reforms that will fix all of this. Health insurance is already hard enough to come by. The applicants must be healthy to qualify for the insurance, so cutting it would cause an epidemic. People can’t afford to live without having the cost of medications on their soulders, now if they had to pay all their medical expenses they would run themslefs to the ground. My mother is terribly ill and she has to visit the doctor offten, and some of the medications she is prescibed costs $500 for 30 pills, not many families can afford that, if it weren’t for Health Care, i don’t know if I had my mom with me right now.
I was actually talking about this topic to one of my family members and we came to the conclusion that we aren’t 100% comfortable that they increase taxes. I understand that we are in a very big problem right now regarding money and that we are in debt but I think that if they increase taxes we as americans are going to feel it a lot. Taxes right now when you go to the store are already a lot and if they increase it we are going to feel it more maybe not the people in the high income section but the middle class and lower class families. But I also have to be positive and maybe that is what we need to be able and get out of this huge debt we are in. Hopefully they find a solution to this problem soon and something that won’t really affect us.
One thing that i really hope that they don’t cut is to education. Right now we as students are having a hard trouble because of all the budget cuts that the schools are already having. Education is something very important in our society and in life that would really suck if the only reason why we couldn’t make it was because of all this cuts they are doing and for us as students it makes everything much harder for everything starting to get a class like up in cal poly to get financial aid because they aren’t giving as much. Another one could be health care because that is something very important that we must have since health is the most important thing in our life.
Between education, health care, and safety, I would probably have to say that I would have to rank them in order of importance exactly in that order: education first, health care second, and safety third. But like many of my peers, I would probably have to say that education is the most important.
Children really are the future and if you raise them right, first of all you wouldn’t see so many kids getting caught by the police for different things. If you take money away from education, what will happen to some of the jobs out there? For example, doctors and nursing. This of course, lends itself into health care and why we shouldn’t get any budget cuts from there either. We already have a shortage of nurses as it is, what would make anyone think that we would be helping ANYTHING by taking money out of California health care.
I mean, god, its already pretty bad as it is.
Last year I had to get stitches in my eyebrow [don't ask why, super embarrassing story] and my mom brought me to the ER to get myself fixed up. The line for the ER was probably a good two hours and this was on a weekday, mind you [I believe it was a sunny Thursday afternoon]. So my mom took me to Urgent Care instead. And honestly, it wasn’t that big of a difference. [Oooh wow! Thirty minutes!] I had to wait an hour and a half to get my bloodied up crusty eyebrow stitched in what took a good five minutes laying on that cardboard mattress.
We should be adding money to these things. Not taking money away from it.
[With what money? Nobody knows...]
The top two priorities the state should not cut, I think are education, and police/fire departments; or in other words the safety departments. One of the main reasons why I believe the state should not cut education is because I and many of my friends are still in the educational system. If the state cuts education then we will be affected, and it will I believe effect our future, and our schools in a major way. For some school this would not be that big of a problem because the parents can afford to donate money to the school to help out, and to get things up and running again. But for most areas in California (mostly in Southern California) parents cannot afford to donate money to the school, and those kid/children/teens suffer even more.
For I-Poly, if the states cut education the way they plan or want to then I-Poly I believe will not do so well. For an example this year, senior year, we do not have enough books for our science class. If the state cut education then we would not be able to buy book for just that one class, let alone who else needs them. The state cutting education will affect everyone in California, even more for the schools who are already on a budget already.
The second one that our state should not cut is our police/fire departments, or our safety departments. The reasons for this is obvious; if we cut our safety departments then California would not be as safe. If we cut our police departments there will obviously be more crime happening, sense there will not be as many police officers out there. Which could spell a real safety issue for cities that do not have, or do not get a lot of crime. This could just open the door for criminals to go to the cities and commit crimes. I live in Diamond Bar, a fairly safe city; but if you look at the cities that surround Diamond Bar those cities are not so safe. If the police departments got cut then those cities crimes could just drift right over to Diamond Bar with out even braking a sweat.
If we cut the fire departments then this makes even a bigger issue for everyone who lives in California. How you may be asking, well what does California have a lot of? California is known for earthquakes, and FIRES! California has lots of fires every year, and our fire departments have a hard time containing them already (sense there is usually five different fires going on at the same time). If the state cuts our safety departments then we as Californians will be screwed for lack of a better term. Our safety departments are having a hard time as it is, cutting them will only make things worse, because you are going to have to spend more money fixing problems the safety departments could not get to in time. The state will just end up paying more money to get those things fixed. Those are the two main ones I do not thing our state should cut.
i agree that that the state of California’s big roles are education, health care, and safety thats why they should raise taxes and not cut programs. These are the big three that apply to us very often, how many times do you hear sirens in pomona (or what ever city your in), go to school, or have a family member that frequently visits the doctor? my point exactly.
if California were to cut essential programs like education how are todays children gonna fix this same problem tomorrow? Maybe if a money management program in schools raising taxes wouldn’t be as big of a problem.
Based on what i know about the California government’s role in my life, the state’s top two priorities are:school education programs and police task forces.
I believe that these two systems make California function as a whole. Schools in California are one of the many ways to protect our children.The other is that of the police task forces. Together they both help Califonia, and thats why they should not create any budget cuts in these areas.
The California school systmes have been sufereing for years beacuse of the lack of materials available for them. If the state were to start cutting in order to close a $15.2 billion gap the results would become severe. Almost every school here in California that i know of has suffered because of budget cuts in the past. Hundreds upon hundred of teahcers loosing their jobs, schoold not able to afford books, and money from the state all have been rationed. How are our children supposed to become our leaders if their resources are being taken away. The standards of tests scores have continuoulsy been lowered because of the lack of information given to the children. WE are saying that is ok to be below average. What kind of message or even better example are we giving our kids. WE are saying that schools and their programs given to help childdren excel in their future doesn’t matter.If the decison to cut school funding is passed then the future for generations to come will be heavily impacted in a negative way.
The police task forces here in Califonia have a huge impact of society. If funding to these stations across the state are minimized the opposite will happen to crime. If the proper resources aren’t given to the men and women of law enforcement, the safety of all become at risk. Not only will the local communities have less protection, the many officers serving will be out of a job. Simple things such as cutting back hours here and there can make a difference, but when it comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars it becomes a problem. To put it simply “If you cut funding for local law enforcements, crime will increase, causing the state to spend more money in the prisons.”
Keeping these two programs i believe will help benefit all of California in a positive way.
The top two priorities for the state are health care and safety. The health care we have today is already as bad as it could get, then if we don’t consider this a priority then it would just get worse. Since people are getting sick almost every day, then they would nee medicine. If they don’t get the appropriate treatments, it can cause them their lives. Think about all the diseases, AIDS and HIVS, that hasn’t been cured yet. If there is no money then hospitals would close down and people would lose their jobs. That is part of the health care. Safety is also a top priority because without it we would always have fear for our lives. Stores would be robbed, houses would be burned down, lives would be taken, and the world would be in chaos. We need protection as much as we need health care.
If the state were to cut budget, it should not cut education budget. Because if we cut the budget, students wouldn’t get the same education like they need, teachers wouldn’t get paid, and people would lose their jobs. If the students don’t get their education then no one would have the knowledge or the skills to face real life and solve problems. Another budget the state shouldn’t cut is health care. Like I said before, our health care isn’t at its best, so if we cut the budget, things would start happening. So those two budgets should be cut.
Based on what you know about the California government’s role in your life, what are the state’s top two priorities and why?
From my perspective the top two priorities of the California government is education and health care/health clinics. I think education is one of the governments top priorities because if they cut off schools then most schools would not have enough funding to run their school,including paying teachers, buying textbooks, suppilies, school buses, etc…It is also important that people have a good education for their future and for the future of the government. Without a proper education, people would not be able to have good paying jobs and it would lead to less spending. Which means the economy would be less valuable. Besides from all of this, I personally would like to go to college and get a degree in something I enjoy and make good money. This would be hard to do with schools being shutdown and/or not having a good education.
I think health care/health clinics are the second most important priority of the government. There are many people who cannot afford health care and without the governments help they would not be able to get the right treatment they need. In time of a crisis or an emergency, there would be only a few places that people could go to. It would be very difficut to get the right treatment, and even medicine would be expensive. Its very important to have good, reliable doctors and some doctors might now want to work if they are not getting payed enough or what they want. How this relates to me is that I’ve seen families not being able to pay for their medical bills and the outcome at the end. It would just get a lot worse if the government did cut off health care.
The state’s top two priorities, in my opinion, are education and government jobs. Education should be a top priority because students seem like they are a burden at the moment. But think of it like this, they are the future and they take over when adults are retired. So would it be smart to take away the opportunities that adults today had from future adult, no it wouldn’t. A part of the education dept that should worry about is the cost of college to college the price of a college can discourage many parents. Another part that the education dept should worry about the size and materials of a classroom because size of the classroom take away attention from the teachers and materials lack the tools to learn that other schools offer. The other main priority of the state is government jobs. Well as of this moment, the DMV is closed on Saturday’s making it hard for the workers for getting paid less and for the customer’s convinces. Well another aspect that is a problem is that people are being laid off causing delay in government offices and making more people unemployed. These facilities are a mandatory need, whether child care dept or the courts. An example that I go to the library every week and the library that I go is has a chance of being shut down because the budget.
If the states is going to be cutting instead of taxing, personally myself I would take a little amount of each account but the main two places where the major cuts shouldn’t happen is the main two priorities that I earlier the education and government jobs. Educations shouldn’t be cut because it has been through many cuts already. Forcing districts not enabling to hiring new teachers that retired, meaning the 40,000 teachers that retired last year according to the LA Times. As well as the summer school was held off in many districts and special programs also stated in the LA Times. The government jobs are what keep society straight. They make convenient happen, let’s people have money in their pockets, and keeps society functioning.
I think the most reasonable solution would be to raise taxes. But it might also help to cut any unnecessary programs. Of course if taxes are raised it will cause people to mediate their spending. It might make it harder for lower income families but at least they wont have to worry about the school expanses or health care. Many people depend on these essential programs so without them they would have a harder time than if they just had to pay higher taxes. Higher income families might not have as much of a problem paying the taxes but they still depend on their education and health insurance. The more critical programs are needed by everyone and everyone can manege to pay the taxes. We put ourselves in this position so we need to live with the consequences until we fix it.
The most important programs that are essential to everyone would be the education and healthcare. Education is needed by everyone that needs to succeed. if education becomes more expensive the students that need school now wont be able to pay and these are the people who will lead our future. Healthcare already has it tough on people and if it gets even harder it would be chaos. This is needed by everyone that needs medical help. Medical help can get to be the biggest expense but with healthcare it gives people a boost. This is a very important issue that needs to be addressed with more political backup and maybe find more solutions.
Republicans and Democrats should come to a compromise that includes both of their ideas. I think that there should be cutbacks on things that are not vital to our society. Hospitals, Schools, Law Enforcement, and DMV’s should not suffer any cut backs. It is important that cutbacks are done in a way that affects the least amount of people.
I also think raising taxes is not such a bad idea. Not to such an extent that people can not afford to buy things but just enough so that we can decrease the wide gap in our debt.
Ifs the state decides that its going to start making cuts I would not recommend that it cut education or health care. Health care is bad as it is already . How are they going to cut health care and make it ten times worse then it is right now. Its hard enough for people to get covered or even pay for health care I cant image how harder it would be when health care gets cut. Health care is something also that is important to everyones lifes and it being cut is going to effect everyone in a horrible way. What are people going to do when they get hurt or are really sick and they don’t have health care. The other thing that i think that we shouldn’t cut is education that is important also and i think that education shouldnt be cut becauses it one of the most important thing in our lifes and the life of childern . So if the state is going to start making cuts it sholud only cut things were the least peolple are going to be effected . I think that the state should also do a little bit of both rasies the taxses a little bit and cut things that we don’t really need or that won’t make a huge impacted on people. By rasising taxs a little bit we won’t feel it as much as just rasing them a lot to pay the budget.
I think that California’s top two priorities are education and safety. Esp. after all the resent fires. Education is extremely important, no matter how much I hate saying this, the children are our future, and we need to make sure that they get all the tools they need to be able to go far in life. I know way too many people who hate to read, that hate started in their youth. California should worry about education first, esp. since our governor messed it up so bad with all those budget cuts. Completely unfair and not right at all. Policemen and firemen are very very important. With such men and woman, crime would be horrendous and a lot of people could get hurt. Also it would make California look rather bad.
I believe that these are the two top priorities that should not be cut because education is vital for a bright future and safety is vital for comfortable and sable communities. We had a fire in my house when I was in elementary school. It happened in my sisters room in the middle of the night. I am very grateful that we had people to help us. I do not want to live in an environment without policemen and firemen. As well, I do not want to go to a school that can’t afford books for it’s students to take home. Every school should be given these things, it’s ridiculous what schools can’t offer these days.
The states top two priorities based on California’s role in my life, is government jobs and education. Government jobs are important because without these jobs, the whole state would be in a crisis. Education is also an important priority for the state because without education, the next generation that follows wouldn’t be so smart.
I think thaT the main priority’s of California today or should be health care and education.
The government should not cut back on the education, and health care.
These are vital aspects of our society. Education is important because we need to know thiongs and our environment. The need for education has become a high requirement today. They are now requiring more then a high school diploma and college graduate diploma for some jobs. This vital aspect prepares for the future and gives a much better chance at a good life rather then someone who is not educated. In my personal opinion some of us take education for granted and do not respect it. We don’t realize how much we need it and important it is. We need it for everything from knowing when to cross the street to teaching a physics problem at MIT, it would be a mistake to cut back on education when the kids today are the future. They need to realize that “Knowledge is power!”
Whats the deal with wanting to cut back on health, what more can they do, everybody knows that we have the worst health care system. Now they want cut back more. That is a big mistake they should change the whole system and rethink their views on the health care. Cutting back on health care is a big problem most of us don’t have health insurance and are forced to pay huge amounts of money to save someones life. First they charge the people huge amounts to save someones life, they don’t care, as long they get their money its all good, and not only do they want do that but they also wanna cut back on it as well. Big mistake
An additional priority they should consider is the police force, it plays vital role today, in our society. With out it there is chaos. People will turn into thugs and not respect anything or anyone. We need rules and we need restrictions. Some of us take this protection for granted and sometimes wish it was all gone but in the end it keeps our environment in shape. If they are considering to cut back on that as well there might as well not even be a gov, what is the point with out full protection.
Education is a big part of our lives in California and its something that everyone benefits from. If the government keeps taking away large portions from the education system, then children in the future will need to be homeschooled and they won’t have the proper social skills to survive in the real world. As the article says, the Education officials have put off replacing 40,000 teachers who retired last year which means that a lot of teachers who are trying to get jobs aren’t going to have any luck in finding any. Teachers who are currently teaching will also be cut because the government isn’t going to be able to afford to pay them. College is also something that I want to go to and if the government started cutting from education, it would be a lot harder to get into a good college and the expectations would be a lot higher for getting into a college. Some colleges might get shut down because of money issues and everyone would be forced to cram into certain colleges. This would mean that they would only accept the best of the best into their institution. It would be good for the college, but it would also kill the student’s determination when they are just trying to get by. Education is a big part of this world and it really shouldn’t be cut.
Law enforcement is also something that should definitely not be cut. The police are always on the streets and they look out for their citizens. If Law enforcement were to be cut, the crime in California would be drastically increased. Criminals would hear about this huge cut in the police and they will think that it’d be a lot easier to get away with a crime, which would lead to them doing a lot more robberies and muggings. We need the police to be there when were in trouble and as it is right now, there aren’t many police out there. Imagine if the police force was cut and many officers got fired. The streets would be an even more dangerous place to be then it is right now. Cops would be forced to patrol the areas that they know are bad which means that they leave the areas where they assume there is a low crime rate leading to more crimes happening in that area. These are the 2 main things that the government shouldn’t cut.
I believe that to decrease the budget gap we should take the republicans approach and lower spending and borrowing. If we increase taxes like the democrats want, living would be even harder! And it’s already tough enough.
Protecting education seems to be an important priority for many students. So, why aren’t students taking advantage of the opportunities available daily? Or are they? Do you feel like you are doing everything you can?
Does the commitment Chinese students have worry you regarding future competition?
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-05/13/content_871182.htm
http://www.hopkins.k12.mn.us/Pages/District/Special/RonW/educationchina.html
OOPS!
I believe that to decrease the budget gap we should take the republicans approach and lower spending and borrowing. If we increase taxes like the democrats want, living would be even harder! And it’s already tough enough.
The two top priorties that should not be cut are education and law enforcement. These two should definately be kept because they affect EVERYONE.
If education gets cuts, teachers may lose their jobs, school books may be cut and busses may stop. This affects everyone, now and in the future, because kids and teens in school are the foundation to our future. Also, if busses are cancled kids may not be able to get to school, because their parents work may start at that time, and moneys more important to stay alive and keept a home.
Law enforcement must be kept because with law enforcement cuts, cops will lose jobs and hours on duty. With less cops driving around the streets, crime rates are definately going to go up. This will make cities look worse with tagging and more roberies.
The Top two priorities the state should have and not cut are education and safety. In our society you really can’t get anywhere without an education. To get a good paying job, the first thing they look at is how much education you have. As a young scholar student I get a firsthand look at the budget cut for education. Because they have to cut the amount of teachers they have, there are less classes with twice as many people wanting to add the class; leaving the majority of young scholar students with no class. By doing this they are not allowing students to receive that education they are paying for and yearning for.
The next thing they should not cut is Safety. Our society is bad enough as it is; it’s filled with crime. Every day you hear tragic stories about old ladies getting robbed in front of them, women getting their purses stolen, young girls getting raped and molested. If we cut the amount of police officers the crime rate will probably go up twice as much; leaving us in a world of hell.
By keeping these our top two priorities our crime level will not escalate into worse matters and students will still be able to receive the education they want and need.
The states top 2 priorities that have a major role in my life, would be the safety and the education system. Those two things are very essential.
California wouldn’t be where it is without its enforcement officers, firefighters, all those who protect me and everyone else. Without them, California would be chaotic. Although it isn’t perfect, California is stable with the police, firefighters, etc. Yeah, it isn’t perfect, but them being there makes a difference.
The education is also a big thing, without it there wouldn’t be futures for anybody. Nobody would have the knowledge to do what they wanted to do. If teachers weren’t paid, students wouldn’t be taught. Nobody would be going anywhere. Education has already been through budget cuts and that didn’t turn out too well.
These two things are the top priorities for me. Without safety, I wouldn’t be walking around as carefree as I am because I know there are enforcement officers.. etc.
Education is a plus, I get to learn what I need to know for the future to get a good job, get a career, and live life.
The top two things that the state should not cut would probably be healthcare and education. The most important thing would be healthcare. There are many low income families who cannot seek the proper help for themselves and their children. If the funds to healthcare were cut, many low income families would not receive the benefits of health issues covered by medical and other health insurance companies. People would no longer be able to receive basic things like dental and optometry services because they are too expensive without insurance. People are hurting every day because they cannot afford to go to hospitals or clinics due to the costs of medicine. Citizens who don’t have the proper funds to receive medical attention are turned away, left untreated, and all they can do is hope that their problem doesn’t get worse. Everyone knows what it feels like to be sick. Imagine how it would feel if you were in tremendous pain and weren’t able to receive the treatment you needed.
Education is the second most important service that should not have its funds cut. Many low income families are suffering because after school programs, for example tutoring, are being forced to close. My mom works for Headstart which is not affected by the budget cut but she knows many families who are suffering. Children who are having a trouble in school are no longer able to receive the tutoring they need and the parents are not always there to help because they are at work trying to pay their bills. Once children begin to fall behind, it is very hard for them to bounce back. Education of all things should not be cut because children need an education to be successful and children are our future.
I agree with everyone that education is one priority that the government should not cut. If we cut education we’ll just have more dumb people trying to become president and the dumb people voting will not notice because they are dumb. Anyway the second top priority they should not cut i think should be….i guess safety. Or else everything would be on fire and everyone would be getting injured and there will be criminals running a muck. I do think that safety is very important in keeping the people from panic. If people see that everything is going to hell, out of human nature they will join in and cause chaos. I am sure that if the government does cut back on spending and borrow, things will not get THAT bad but it would be in everyones best interest not to cut back on education and safety.
Education is something everyone who replied to the blog agreed that the government should not cut but i don’t think they take advantage of what they have available to them, I include myself in this category. This does not apply to everyone but the majority are worried about passing the classes instead of actually learning. I’m sure everyone picks from something from one or two class but we could be getting so much more out of our education if we cared about it enough. I think apathy is a huge problem with students today.
Am i worried about Chinese kids taking my future job…Not really but i think if students had half of the commitment that Chinese students have, i would be a little worried.
Healthcare and Education should not be cut.
Healthcare should not be cut because everyone should be able to get help when they need it especially in emergencies. If you can save lives with healthcare, then why would you want to take it away and potentially end lives that could have been saved? Healthcare is vital to our society and should not be cut because saving lives and extending people’s life expectancy should be a top priority for everyone. Recently, my mom tried to switch to a cheaper health care but they could not switch her. If healthcare was cut she might not have the healthcare at all, seeing as how we can barely manage the healthcare we have right now.
Education should not be cut because it has already been cut many times before. Any more cuts to the education system would put colleges and high schools in deep trouble. Cal Poly’s budget has been cut and as a result many of the young scholars are not getting into college classes. For example, last winter I had to take swimming because I couldn’t find any other classes. Swimming didn’t help me in the least but it was my only option. Any more cuts, I might not have even been able to get into the swimming class. Education is very important seeing as how this generation is leading the future. In the future I hope to be surrounded by intelligent and creative people. Education is what opens the doors to these qualities.
We should close the budget gap by doing a blend of both: raise some revenue taxes based on luxury items (things that aren’t necessary. We shouldn’t tax necessary items such as gas or food only unneeded things like clothes and eating out. ) and maybe refinance the states obligations to a cheaper, lower rate. This would cut the interest of the money we owe. We would be getting a greater income while also owing less money.
The delay of the budget plan is affecting all of us in one way or the other. I believe they should raise our taxes instead of cutting spendings and borrowing money. If they borrow more money that will only get us in a bigger debt and if they cut spendings, it will affect all of California majorly. One issue that they should not cut spendings for is education. Education is the key for a better future. If children don’t receive the knowledge they deserve, then in the future we won’t have doctors, attorneys, scientists or leaders that will guide the future generations. This issue has affected various students I know that go to Cal Poly. According to them, it is much difficult to enroll in classes now because they have become crowded. It is also much harder to qualify for financial aid. I myself have been a witness of this situation. During the Spring Quarter of 2008 at Cal Poly, I was planning on enrolling to the World Dance and Cultures class. When we got to class the first day, there were enough seats open for my friends and I. At the end of class though, the professor did not let us add to her class. Her justification was that she was giving priority to the college students for the reason that the budget cut for education was making it harder for students to enroll in a class, which was understandable.
Many of us disagree on what should be the priority of the states’ government to handle first. Some of us believe their priority should be health care others education and some of us government jobs. One thing that we can all agree on though, is that the republicans and democrats need to come to a conclusion before this situation becomes ncontrolable.
The two tops things the state shouldn’t cut is, heathcare and education. Some of the reasons why we are in the shape that we are in is because we dont pritorize the way we distribute our money. Now that we have passed the deadline, we have to think of two really important things to keep, compared to other things that are evenly important.
I feel healthcare shouldn’t be cut because people fought to hard for it. Without funds for healthcare, the low encome families can’t see doctors, dentists, and also simple things like a trip to the hospital. If you might not know already, hospital and doctor visits are already expensive as it is, people dont go becuase of money issues. If we cut money out, almost everybody wouldnt be able to see the doctors. Healthcare and benefits help out families period, low income or high income, its a certain assest to life that we can’t live without in “our” economy.
Education is also impotant to keep wthout cutting funds for. Some schools like I-Poly need those funds to stay open and help children/tens in need. School to some people can be an escape from their enviroment or just a chance to prove themselves to the world and their families. Special programs help kids who need that support system or even help out families who can’t really be there for thier child. Without some of those programs, I wouldn’t have survived with my mom going to school. After school programs, sports, tutoring help out families. If you cut those funds, we can not see a better future for our children.
The two things i think California should not cut is education and the police departments. I think cutting these would cause more of a problem than this state already has.
If education gets cut, then we will have a bunch of uneducated people in California. that will only create more of a problem because we will have no one to work at the jobs that require education.
I know that a lot of people don’t like the police cause they give stupid tickets and act like jerks, but if California were to cut the police department’s funds things would get a lot worse. think about it if cops wages get cut, they are going to be more pissed off about there job then ever and will be bigger jerks to people. also if they will write more tickets, so that they can get more money.
Well with how the economy is right now in this situation I would not know which one to choose but I would lean more towards the democrat way because we have already gotten budget cuts. Also everything is going to start raising in price and with the taxes it would be a bit more expensive. If they were going to do budget cuts I believe it should have nothing to do with schools because they already have cut our budgets and that would be even more devasting. What we should improve is our healthcare because I believe this is also a major concern right now. Also our senior citizens healthcare. Overall we need to solve these problems before they get even worse than how they are right now. I don’t think any of these choices are really good because of how this country is doing. Our objective I believe we should be focusing on is education and healthcare more than anything and our troops. Overall if I had to pull onto one side I would choose the Democrats because we don’t really any budget cuts at this moment.
Like many of the other people who have answered this question, I relieve that cutting education would be a big mistake. Cutting the budget for education would be bad for so many people not just the students. For example teacher’s salaries would be cut or something much simpler like the teachers would get fired. I know that not many students value their education, but it may be because they aren’t motivated, and one of the reasons that can cause this is that after high school the students might not have the resources to go to college therefore feeling that school is not all that important.
I feel that cutting Medical care is pretty bad too because our Medical care right now is bad as it is, the sad thing is that it could be better. We have people dying because they couldn’t afford to be seen be a doctor or because they could afford the medicine prescribed to them. If they cut Medical care they are not just affecting us they might be affecting generations in the future because I don’t that any amount of cutting will help pay everything completely, I mean if it hasn’t worked before.
I think that doing a little bit of both might help a little more than just taking a big chunk of both. Maybe raise the taxes for a while and then take a little bit from the other budgets.
I believe that the two most important things for California to take care of is our educational system and law enforcement. First, law enforcement, which i believe is very important, because without enough people to enforce laws crime rates will rise. The sole purpose of establishing a government is so that you can be protected by it. If there is less law enforcement there will be more crime and more teenagers will be drawn to the crime which will have an effect on education. Education is the other indispensible priority. Without a proper education there is not much chance for students to be (financially) successful in their adult lives. Education should be a top priority because without an education the world of tommorrow will not prosper.
I think the government should not cut its education funding. Budget cut backs already affect schools too much. If you cut funding to schools, teachers get fired and classes get bigger. Or schools have no money for textbooks so students have to learn from outdated books. At my sisters school, they are over their max number of students by more than 300 kids. My sister didn’t get a world history or chemistry book because there aren’t enough. To cut funding even more is not the right thing to do when there already isn’t enough supplies for everyone.
The government also should not cut back on the health care system. With so many people in California without health care cutting funding to it would be insane. Everyone depends on medical care during their lifetime and the government should provide us with basic health care. Our health care system is already one of the worst in the world (while we are the ‘most powerful’ country) so cutting back on it even more is not something that would benefit us very much. It might help close the budget gap but what good is that if no one can afford to take care of themselves?
I think that the Democrats and Republicans should compromise because I don’t think only raising taxes or only cutting spending are going to close such a big gap. If you cut some things that aren’t as important then you won’t have to raise taxes as much as you would have if you didn’t cut anything. I don’t think we can close the gap just on raising taxes alone. Our economy is already in trouble and some people hardly make enough to make ends meet now, raising taxes would put a lot of the population in financial trouble.
The first priority, in my opinion, should be education. Education is already hurting because of budget cuts. Tuition for college is going to go up, and people are already struggling. The state has set some unfunded mandates which the districts are unable to comply with. This makes them have to cut from other places, and the families are the ones who lose out on their education.
The second priority should be programs for the developmentally disabled. The people in our society who have disabilities are probably the most vulnerable, but they seem to recieve the first cuts. Most of the time, these people can’t speak up for themselves. My cousin has CP, and I have seen how dependant the disabled are on these programs. It doesn’t seem right that they are in need of the most help, and that that help is the first that the state does away with in times like this.
At first glance, it may seem like an uncomplicated decision regarding what cut-backs should be made to the California state budget. Education, healthcare, and law enforcement are, in my opinion, all vital to the essential social structure of our state. However, I have decided that the two top priorities would be education and law enforcement. Cut-backs in education mean less teachers and in some instances, less schools. Last year and this year, finding a class for Young Scholars has been very difficult. Teachers have been getting laid off due to the budget cut, resulting in fewer classes. There are fewer classes with the same amount of students, so college students are getting first priority. With budget cuts, students do not get a complete education. Some of the first classes that get closed are art and music. These two classes are outlets for students who are struggling in math or other classes. Students realize that they are good at drawing or making music and it boosts their self confidence which in turn helps them work harder at other subjects. Students that need help can no longer find a tutor easily. Consequently they fall behind, and sometimes never catch up. These students may never be able to have the career they want. Education is necessary for our future, and our children’s future.
Secondly, law enforcement should definitely not be cut. Less officers patrolling the streets means more crime and a longer response time to 911 calls. More people would get robbed or killed, and the news would be filled with even more reports of death and injury. Murderers and burglars would feel safe braking into homes in broad daylight. People would no longer feel safe in their homes. I know I wouldn’t if there were fewer officers than there are now. There would be more vandalism and graffiti as well, with officers focusing their attention on more serious cases, such as murder. The more law enforcement officers there are, the safer our society and our lives.
I think that the government should raise taxes instead of cutting funds. If the government would to cut off funds than education, health, and the safety of your city would be in danger. First off all the funds that the government gives out for education and after school programs are good for teens because if helps them out in there education. After school programs also helps out teens to stay out of trouble. Another main part is the our health. Some people need health insurance because there not able to pay all of there medical bill so that’s important to have. The most important thing that i would not like the government to cut off would be the security of our country and cities we live in. Security and peace officers are important because they keep everything and the enviroment safe from danger. By raising just a little bit of the taxes payer money is better way out from our budget
I think that bringing up taxes and cutting funding will not help our economy. Borrowing will not be very effective either. I think the only way to get us out of debt anytime soon will mean trying something risky. For the debt to go away people must spend a lot of money. For people to spend a lot of money the prices for products must be reasonably good for the lower and middle middle class, since those two parts make up most of the population. For the prices to be reasonable there must be a large enough demand and an efficient supply of the products. Basically Californians need to make more money and Businesses need to bring down their prices even if it seems to hurt them at first. with more money circulating the amount lost will start to grow smaller and the amount made will start to go up.
To do this the government should borrow money and use to help businesses not go bankrupt when they bring their prices down. Californians should then be encouraged to buy products and services. The taxes should stay low, so as not to discourage buying.
If the state of California begins to cut things in order to fill the budget gap something that is a top priority to me is education. I know it’s been mentioned a lot this blog, but to be specific not making cuts to higher education is important to me. Like many of my peers it was difficult to get into classes after the budget cuts made to Cal Poly. I believe that if you are a college student and you are paying for your education it is not fair for you not to be able to take the courses you want because they were cut. At the same time I see local high schools close to my house not using the money the state has given them in the ways they should. I see schools spending thousands of dollars to renovate their football field, when the school itself is falling apart and they’re aren’t enough textbooks for all the students in the class. Other schools in my area are pouring money into stadiums, and the effect is they have less money to hire teachers so classes are getting bigger and bigger. I
I say raise taxes, because if things are cut them people are going to suffer much more. And we cant have more people on the street than we already have. by raising taxes we would just have to pay a couple more cents and everyone will still be okay. all the people that need the help like for example welfare. many people would not survive if it was not for that government help. And besides we have already gotten some bidgets cut why would we need more cuts. it will just affect us more. many people are probably undecided about which side to go on because of the way the economy is. and its absolutly true, we are all on a budget and many of us dont have as much money as before. People now are not making that much money compared to other years. many things have gone up in price especially the gas. GAs is the one thing that most people worry about in any time of year. but slowely gas prices have also gone down. And i think that if taxes are put up a little more people will start functioning again. everyone will get the help they need from the government, including school funds, welfare, etc. Education is one of the most important thing that the government has to offer. and so they should continue giving the school funds and helping out with what ever they can. that is the only way that students in the near future will have a successful life, only if they have a good education as a young adult.
do think education is important, but I also think it is important for money to be spent on things that are at top priority.
Another thing that means a lot to me that I hope does not get cut is work to the roadways. I live in parts of Fontana where driving on the roads is really bad, and there hasn’t been very much effort to fix them so far, so I think cutting roadway work would push it even farther down the list. I know other parts of California have problems with their roads, and I think working to fix them should still be a priority. To go along with that freeway access is a problem in my area, and I’m sure others in California have similar problems, so I think roadway work is an important priority.
I believe that a solution to rebuilding California’s economy can lie within the ideas of the two political parties. I think we cannot afford to make any major budget cuts to California’s social services since they are so vital to the lives of the Californian people. I think we should cutback on the borrowing of money, it is things like loans and interest that can really lead to an economic downfall. Rasing taxes would also be a major help in keeping the government and it’s services afloat, but only if the tax raise is actually reasonable for the Californian people, anything too extreme could have disastrous consequences on citizens.
There are also essential services in which the budget MUST not be cut into. Services such as education and healthcare. I believe these two services rise above the rest. It is absolutely imperative that we keep the education strong for our future as economic issues will someday be in their hands as well. Healthcare is also essential because it is a government’s job to keep it’s citizens well taken care of. it is also necessary for people who may have health problems but cannot afford health insurance.
I would also like to add that safety in California is also a huge priority since we are prone to natural disasters such as wildfires and earthquakes. People such as Law enforcement officials and Firefighters can keep the effects of these disasters to a minimum.
So with a combination of the two; a very slight tax increase and cuttingback on government borrowing and lending, I feel that California’s economy will eventually rise and the gap will not be so difficult to close.
I think the should raise taxes. Yes it takes money out of your parents pockets but if you really think about it most parents are going to end up losing money anyways. The reason is that if the government starts cutting off activities then kids are going to be on the street more. And if kids are on the street more, they are bound to get in trouble. Thats when parents find out they have to pay a huge amount of money for your kid “expressing themselves.” I am not only talking about in a bad way like tagging or anything. But like littering, I mean most kids already do litter and if we were on the streets more it would probably happen more often. Sooner or later someone is going to get caught. Or maybe not even that. Maybe someone will just get caught for “J Walking.” I know there is a lot of kids that already got tickets for that. Could you imagine if there were more kids on the street? Kids would also not only be in danger of getting tickets but they would be tempted with other bad things that the streets offer. Now is this all really worth a couple of dollars on extra taxes???
I think the top priority would be education. Education is the foundation of generations. We learn and bring new ideas into society which brings growth as a society. Education is vital in our world. There are the core subjects that helps us gain a broad perspective of life, or possibly job interests. But I believe that the other programs like electives such as drama, cooking, wood shop, and others helps students to learn skills that we use in everyday life like public speaking, or even how to work on things around the house. After school programs also help children/teens get involved and helps them grow and develop interests that makes them who they are. I remember in Jr. High when I was in the first year we had a drama elective. I wasn’t eligible for it until I got to my second year. When I got to my second year they had cut the elective out of the school due to budget cuts and all they had was sports, band, computers, and the essentials yearbook and ASB. It was hard to get into those classes because those students were trained the year previous and really my only choice was computer class. This past year the college classes at Cal Poly have been packed because of the cut. There are less teachers and a lot of students its very hard to get into a class with more that 2 units. Since the student to teacher ratio is going up this causes the students to have less one on one conversations with teachers.
Another priority would be Police and Fire departments. If we start cutting the Police department crime rate will go up and this will be affecting the cities and the people who are living in close courters or raising their families. We definitely need to keep the order in our neighborhoods and cities. The fire departments would also be a priority because California has been known to have major fires. We have has a few major ones down in southern California leaving many people without homes. We also just recently had a major fire in northern California. This doesn’t only effect the people but in my opinion may also effect businesses. These people loosing homes could effect their jobs, they might not be mentally stable. But anyway I think these departments shouldn’t be cut. Last year my Dad lost his house in the fires and I honestly think its because the fire department wasn’t prepared or couldn’t strategically make it to the house but there were many homes lost. I think if we were to cut fire departments that many more homes would be lost in fires and the firemen who are on the job are going to have a load of work on their shoulders.
I think that their should be cuts on borrowing and we should only spend what we have in the future when we do become stable. But to get to that point I think we need to have taxes raised but only to a ratio of the persons income. I think that it should be a balance there are some programs that we can cut temporarily until our fiscal is stable and leveled out.
At first raise the taxes seems like a viable solution but what I realized is that raising the taxes isnt gonna be cheap. It may start out that way but if you think about it that means the price of everything goes up as if things aren’t expensive enough. So I disagree with the notion of taxes being raised.
My top priorities would have to be education and health care.Me personally I do not enjoy or like school but I do see the effect knowledge has on people and the effect when they do not have an education so I know how much education is needed in California. Education is what helps people get out of bad situations and into better ones.
Health care is also crucial this is literally dealing with peoples lives and futures and we already have a poor system and cutting back on the health care of our state would be devastating . I would rather lose my job and look for another one than die because the Health care system had cutbacks.
Well in my opinion we should runaway to canada but i heard in the new that the whole world is going through an economic thing so yeah :/ my dreams where crushed!!!!
I think that the main priorities should be health care and education. Education is part of what make us a successful person and willing to carrying on a career. we have to tak into consideration that this isnt the end of the world and that after we are gone generations will follow and in order for us to surpass everything we are experiencing not only as a country but as a world we need people to have the capacity to carry us through. in order to have people like that they should have a proper education.
Health care has always been an issue in my eyes. after seeing micheal moore’s sicko video i have taken into consideration that our health care sucks. and since california is the state with the biggest population it needs a better health care system. this includes a more reliable health insurances. so therefore i believe that education and health care should be the main focus to give money to and not limit money to.
From my understandings California is in deep debt of $15.2billion. The democrats and republicans couldnt come up w/ an agreement which democrats wanted to raise taxes and the republicans said no but what they wanted to do was cut programs. Both parties make valid choices it’ll just affect everyone differently.
Raising taxes for the time til we get back on our feet will affect basically every californian family well middle and lower class thats for sure.Such as the price for groceries has risen dramatically which had made families re-think what they really needed.
Cutting programs such as education,and health care would be one of the dubest decisions we can ever do. Education whether we like it or not is essentional for a future. I honestly feel that cuts in the education department shouldnt even be a consideration.
Also even considering to cut down in the law enforcment area wouldnt be such a bright idea.I say if you want to live in an unsafe enviornment and have the crime rates go up because we dont have enough law enforcement officers then i say cut down on the programs.
Overall we’re at a lose lose situation whichever way we look at it. But over all its up to our government anyways. There’s not much we can do, but just hope that they make the right choice and have in the back of their minds that their decision will affect all of the California residents for the time being.
In my honest opinion California cannot survive with only Two Prioritized programs. But the comment calls for two and I would have to say of the many areas the state budget funds Education is one and the next on the list would have to be the Police force. If we cut spending Education our schools would not function to full potential. In fact the school system could collapse. I don’t mean our college education either, I mean our elementary, middle, and high school education. With a focus on Elementary school. We learn the most It seems in Elementary and when you run out of a budget to pay teachers and services in Elementary schools you deprive young children of a critical education.
I don’t remember the exact date but if I remember correctly enough we already pulled nurses out of Elementary schools, and I think Junior High too. If California were to continue cutting spending on the Education system who would we lose next? Councilors? Teachers? I went to a middle school were the class sizes were near 40 students and we had about 3 to 4 teachers for each subject per grade level. Taking one away would increase classes to 50 students or more. Republicans may want to cut spending but if they pick Education as an area to cut from they would put a big dint in the system we have.
Second on the list would be Police. I know lots of people might think that we need health care more than a Police force, but crime is a big cause of hospital visits and if we lose our Police force we lose our hold on crime. Crime rates took a long time to drop but they can take weeks to rise again. Right now I feel safe walking the streets of my city, and that is because I know we have a dedicated police force protecting our streets. Now some people may think that their police force doesn’t do much, but it does even if they are against the police because of a ticket. Getting a ticket or being pulled over is no reason to hate our law enforcement, that means they are doing their jobs.
We have laws, and we have law enforcement, what good are laws when you do not have those officers out on the streets enforcing them? Cutting spending on the police force would effect everyone in California. It’s a wide comparison but taking our Police force away or thinning it out would be like taking Arnold out of office but not replacing him, leaving us without a State leader. How would we function? Even if we could we would lose a crucial part of our state government.
Education
and
Police
Those are the two priorities I believe California should not cut funds from.
I am going to have to agree with everyone and say that cutting education would be a big mistake. It is already pretty bad as it is. Students cannot afford for more teachers to be laid off because their school can’t pay for them. That just makes students fit into a tiny classroom with like 40 students per teacher. Maybe if we invested a lot more money into education, like supplies lab equipment, etc., then it would make California a much better place. These educated students can then have the brain power to solve any future problems the state might encounter.
As for health care and law enforcement, I think health care is much more important because I have seen first hand how many people go to the hospital. It is unbelievable the long lines people have to wait there. If some of the money tax payers pay goes to the health care system, I think it would really help out a community. I once went to the emergency room because I had a horrible cough and we got there and of course a bunch of people were there waiting. The people would just look at me whenever I would cough. I was dying and I wasn’t being called in. It wasn’t until I started throwing up they finally paid some attention to me. We need to higher more doctors and more teachers in order to live happily.
If California’s government decides to start making cuts in our state, I strongly believe they should not make cuts in Education or in the Police Department. Education is a major part in this free Country that we live in, and for California to start slowly taking education from children does not benefit them at all. By cutting teachers and making classroom sizes bigger, there would be no personal connection with student and teacher, and school would seem more like a chore then a fun learning and growing experience. I could not imagine attending Elementary school or Junior High and having 100 other kids in the class and one teacher. The learning environment would be very poor and I do not think I of anyone else would benefit from it. Also, by cutting school activities such as sport and after school programs give kids more of chance to get in trouble and to not follow the right path in life. Education is knowledge that you keep forever that no one can take away from you, and I believe every child and teenager deserves the best education they can get.
The California Police Department should not have to undergo any budget cuts either. The Police Department protects all California citizens equally and looks out after us. The crime rate in California is already high enough and to have budget cuts in the systems would just make it even worse. Especially for me, being that I live in Pomona, if our Police Department were to undergo budget cuts the city would probably have more gang violence, and a much higher crime rate. Citizens in California need to be protected and with the help of Cops we can always be reassured that we do not have to live our lives in fear, and by taking the privilege away would hurt a lot of people in many ways.
As a student in the state of California I would say that the top two priorities
they shouldn’t cut should be health care programs and education programs .The reason why the shouldn’t cut health care programs is because all the young orphans and teen pregnancy really need the help. If they were to do that the abortion rates of babies would up and the amount of pregnancy would go up as well, and that would be because they would stop providing teens with information and protection. For example a lot of gangster and street thugs have a lot of sex out there and a lot of them have no money, so they go to clinics to be provided with free condoms and other kinds of free protection out there. So if they were to stop giving those things out there would be a lot more pregnant women. These are the kind of things we all need to think about, because people actually never think this outside of the box. The reason why they shouldn’t cut education programs Is because it would lead up to less students in school, the knowledge of that U.S would go down and the street violence would increase. An example of why the street violence would go up is because if they cut after school programs like sports, kids would have nothing better to do but to go out in the streets. And in a lot of cities its not very safe for kids to be running around up to no good. California shouldn’t cut education programs because us the kids that are in school now are the future of the United States, we are the ones that are going to be dealing with these kind of problem later on in life. So if the states does this to us there might not even be a future for some American kids.
If we put the facts togther, the democrate way or the republican way either way or both of them combined in any way people are still going tosuffer. I say this because everone is found in different situations. Some poeple are sick. others have disemployment, others are just lasy and don’t like to work, some are drug users and alcholics, and so many more. that is just in a individual degree, if we look at the global degree we see horible things like wars, global warming, natural disasters, hunger, disease, hatered among people and so many other problems. What is the pupose of a government?
I would think that it is to make the people or its citzens happy, providing justice, a sence of guidness, and law. humanity has passed threw many types of governments, for example, kings, imperialism, comunism, democracy, and the list goes on. None of these have brought its citizens permenatly, peace and happiness. What the world trully needs is someone that can solve all these problems, in the global status and the individual status. The question is who? Who has the wisdom, the will and the power to do this?
Believe it or not millions of people worldwide asks for this government and they ask of it in the lords prayer or also known as the heavenly father prayer. If you know it it goes something like this,”Our father in the heavens, let your name be santified . let your kingdom come.”
In the bible we find what god’s kigndom is, what god’s kingdom would do and when will the kigndom cause gods will to be done on earth? if you want to know more i advise you to look for help to find out what the bible really taeches about this subject. Millions have enjoyed using the question and answeer method when discusing the bible with Jehovah witness. I hope you can too!
Take a look at the budget challenge-see other blog article.
Recent News: Schwarzenegger, top legislators reach a budget deal
They plan to raise that money instead by hiking penalties on corporations for late payment of taxes, according to details provided by the leaders.
See http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget19-2008sep19,0,2043045.story
I like how they agreed to solve nothing this year.
If the state does decide to take the Republican route to fixing the budget problem and cut programs, I believe that they should avoid cutting in education and transportation. Schwarzenegger vetoed the budget bill because he was thinking of California’s fiscal problems in the future. If he is thinking of this as a problem that can not just be swept under the rug by being fixed temporarily then education should definitely not be cut because education is a key factor in California’s future. The reason education is a key factor because it is the training of the future employees of California. Even the blue-collar working class has to at least complete their high school education. It seems that when these cuts happen they hit the high school population the most. After-school programs not only benefit students, but the economy as well. After-school programs allow parents to work longer shifts which in turn boost the output of products and services which will in the long run boost the economy.
Not only that, but transportation should not be cut at all because it is already a tremendous problem for our state especially in southern California. The freeways are packed and public transportation is not ideal. Transportation issues prevent people from working, discourages traveling, and it can mean less shopping because people are not willing to get in there car or hop on a bus to go shopping. If the point is to help our economy and fix our budget problem, then cutting programs that can both in the long and short run boost our economy would not be a smart move for our government.
I would say to raise taxes just because cutting funds and stuff like that would hurt many people from adults to kids. Raising taxes would affect many but thats a small price to pay when other things are on the line; important things like school programs, and many needed things for schools. So even thinking of cutting funds for school would be pretty retarded because school helps out people of course many don’t like school but it does help out for the future.
The top two priorties are education and health care.
Despite of one that doesnt know what theyre going to be in the future coming of school, education itself helps an individual to develop of an idea of what he or she wants or likes to do. Although in the past year there have been many teachers unempolyed because of low budgets, education is in important thing to value and think about saving for up coming generations. Therefore education is one of the top priorities that should not be cut.
Its unfortunete that health clinics are closing down, this is a huge orginzation that should stay alive for the help of the ill. Without there would so much more illness and even worse more deaths. And even though many that are employed are not getting paid there are still people that are helping voluntarly but is still not enough. Its obvious that with out money oh so many things cannot be accomplished. But if possible both education and health care should not be cut, which to me and many others they are important to the world we live in today.
We should just cut education from the government’s power. We should start with a clean slate. We wouldn’t have this problem in the first place if everyone wasn’t so selfish and always trying to make things better and better. We’re Americans. We can have breakfast at 3 PM or wear white after Labor Day. That was very off topic, but my point is we should have all schools privately owned. Meaning that you don’t have to worry about other people cutting your education. You basically get what you pay for. High education would cost more money and lower education would cost less money. In fact, education should be a choice. Most of us aren’t even taking it seriously anyways. Most of our plans after high school is to go to a community college anyways. It’s not like you actually remember everything you learn from high school. It is basically retaught in community college anyways. We should at least cut down high school into two years instead of four. That would save the government millions of dollars.
If the state must cut in order to help close its $15.2 billion budget gap, I feel the top two priorities they should not cut are state officials like police, and public workers, and any more cuts to education.
If security or police workforce wages were reduced, officials would be more inclined to accept bribes, abuse their power, and just do a lousy job. With police proficiency down, violence is almost sure to go up, and when violence is up, public happiness goes down. Not to mention with the rise in violence comes the rise in convictions and arrests, when health care alone already eats up 1.1 million dollars a year.
Education seems to be a popular debate when talking about the budget, however I do feel it is a fairly valid concern. The education system is partly to blame for the crisis we are in now. like what Mr. Ogden has said that if more Americans could do math, they would have realized part of the financial mess they were getting themselves into.
We should just cut education from the government’s power. We should start with a clean slate. We wouldn’t have this problem in the first place if everyone wasn’t so selfish and always trying to make things better and better. We’re Americans. We can have breakfast at 3 PM or wear white after Labor Day. That was very off topic, but my point is we should have all schools privately owned. Meaning that you don’t have to worry about other people cutting your education. You basically get what you pay for. High education would cost more money and lower education would cost less money. In fact, education should be a choice. Most of us aren’t even taking it seriously anyways. Most of our plans after high school is to go to a community college anyways. It’s not like you actually remember everything you learn from high school. It is basically retaught in community college anyways. We should at least cut down high school into two years instead of four. That would save the government millions of dollars. It’s a start.
Ok,well…I would like to know why we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. Did people not think about what the future consequences of going into a huge amountof debt would be? That we would be in the end of September still trying to figure out our budget because we are $15.2 BILLION in debt? That the amount of classes on a college campus would be going down while the amount of students attending would not causing students to have a extremely difficult time getting into the GE classes they need to graduate?
I believe that education and safety forces absolutely should not be cut. Education because if people need to start paying more for college, people are going to start dropping out. Most people heavily rely on scholarships and financial aid as it is, if the sticker price goes up people are going to graduate from high school and start working right away. Colleges are not the only schools that would suffer from the effects of education budget cuts. High schools, middle schools and elementary schools would all suffer. They might not have enough money to get the supplies and books they need. They might not have enough money to build the new building they so desperately needed or get the new playground/PE equipment they were looking forward to getting.
Our safety forces, like the police and firefighters are needed. A budget cut to them means less officers or firefighters on duty, which means more crime or extinguishing a fire they used to need 5 people to put out with only 3 people. Personally, I don’t think we need anymore crime.I mean I don’t want to live in a crimne filled state that has 5 police and 4 firemen per city [an exaggeration of course, but not for long if we keep getting further into debt].
I don’t think that we should borrow. That’s what got us into this whole debt situation in the first place right? We just need to stop borrowing money and start cutting spending on things that are unecessary or that we can get at a later date.
I think cutting taxes will do the community good but also will make a majority of people struggle economically. The good side about it will be that programs like WELFER, WIC, etc. because the needy people will have more food, clothes, and also medicines for the family. Schools are going to hire more teachers, make their campus bigger, more curricular activities and so on. For example I-Poly blames not having sports on the budget that we have. If the taxes were a little higher we probably will not be having that issue right now. Also, our streets would look much neater and cleaner because we will have more state workers to help us out.
The bad side of raising taxes can be affecting the lower class people in our society. they will not want to spend more money on other stuf because they will not afford the taxes. That can effect the states econimy as well because if less people spend money we can find ourselves in a recession like we are right now.
I think the governments main priorities should be Education and Health Care. In fact the government should raise funding for Education and Health Care and make up the debt by raising all taxes. I believe education is the top priority because the state could raise funding for health care and other programs but without educated people to fill the necessary positions at hospitals and schools funding wont help anything because we will still have a shortage of doctors and teachers witch are most important to running a good school and hospital and by raising funds for education we are less likely to have a shortage of doctors, teachers and employees for important jobs. The second priority of the government should be Health Care because there are so many people out there that need medical help but don’t get the proper help they need because they can’t afford it so they shy away from going to the doctors. Like my coworker who refuses to go to the doctor for a problem he has because he owes so much money for previous procedures he’s had that wasn’t fully covered by his insurance. So I think the state should raise funding for health care so everyone can get the proper help they need. One more thing I think the United States should have universal health care
Two top priorities of the state to fund would be public safety and education. Without education one would not go to far in life, or at least many wouldn’t make it. I know there are people out there who have done well without college. I know I want my educatoin to be able to succeed in life with minor problems. It will help me get a goo career and therefore be able to contribute a bit more to society than if I had minimum wage. If they cut education, they are shortening our possibilites of survival in life in the near future, which can cause even more problems. Also another part I include for education is the library, which is a big chunk of knowledge we, students, need from time to time.
The second priority is public safety. Without the police helping slow down crime, it would be chaos. Gangs would probably be ruling most of our cities by now, like they do in other places and sometimes countries. We also need people to protect us from other criminals or people who would do us harm. Also, if there was a fire, and we didn’t have enough firefighters, it could create a greater danger and harm to people around these sort of situations.
I think that the first thing the governement should not cut is health care. People need to be healthy in order to go about their normal lives, and if more people cannot pay for medical attention, then that would result in a smaller number of healthy citizens,and if we dont have healthy citizens, then we really have no one to go to their jobs every day and make the economy work.
The second highest priority on that list is education. If everyone is generally healthy, especially children, then they can go to school and be efficient learners. If we cut spending on education, we wouldnt have anybody smart enough to figure out solutions to the worlds problems.
Due to the high debt level in the state of California a budget is in order.
But the problem between the Republicans and Democrats needs to be solved first.
Senate Don Perata has the right idea about the fact that California needs
a resolution now. Both the Republicans and Democrats need to come to a compromise,
so that we can fix our economy. There has to be some way for them to meet between
raises taxes and cutting government funding.
Many people have been talking about health care.
I believe that that problem is to be solved universally,
not just in the state of California. But it is an important topic for our budget crisis.
This should not be cut out of our budget because California’s people must
be protected. Just because the state’s government made a mistake does not mean
that it should penalize the people. Health care should be provided to all citizens.
Our education system should not be cut either. The children that are in school now,
are our future generation of politics and government employees. So if they have
a poor education right now they will not be able to apply themselves later on.
If anything were to be cut things like environmental/agriculture care could be somewhat cut,
or more efficient ways could be found. Things like energy saving lights could be used
to cut down on the costs of replacing lights in cities.
If the state decided that the best option was to start cutting to collect money, then i think the first thing i would say has to stay intact, is the job stability and income level of all california citizens.
People should not have to go through another season where instead of pay raises, you get a decrease. I don’t think that people should have to worry about loosing their jobs because their place of work can’t afford to hire them any longer.
like the budget cuts in the school disrict a couple of years ago, i think jobs need to be kept away from govt.
I also think that the imports of forgiegn goods should not be cut. when you cut that, food prices go up along with everyhting else. it would be a very big messy problem; bigger that the one California already is in.
Its always funny to me how nothing ever seems to get solve…just pushed back or saved till later. I think that hiking penalties on corporations is good idea, but i don’t think that its good enough to solve the problem. I would still like to see some kind of agreement upon a middle ground. They should taxes, but just slightly, and they should cut some programs, they should just be very carefull with what programs they cut, and they should also hike penalties, and i think that the penalties should be very high, because if somebody is going to not be affected as much it would be the big coorperations. And taxes are already pretty high, but i think that everybody could handle just a little bit more. and there are some pregrams that we realy dont need. while there are some other programs that are truely nessesary and are already hurting, thus they should be left alone, like education.
The State’s top two priorities are coming up for a budget or a way to come up with things that can be cut backed on to get 15.2 Billion dollars. The two priorities the state should not cut are education and health care. Education is a child’s future so there for we should set a better example. Everyone wants their children to succeed but how can we do so when we don’t have enough schools, classrooms, teachers, and books. The school budget cuts is a ridiculous idea because everyone needs an education and it is hard is to get into schools already, there is enough budget cuts in education. The school budget cuts has affect preschoolers to people in college. Education should be the very last option to cut funds from because education is very important. The students are our future and they will need to go through high school without getting turned away because there was no more space or there were no books for them to read in class. Health care is other thing that should not be cut because many people get hurt and need medical care 24/7. If we cut Health Care there is a possibility that more diseases will occur because there is no one to take care of the patients. The free clinics are becoming a limited option because they are running out of people to work there and want to charge the patients that go. There are so many people that do not have health care already if we start to cut that it will only make things worse. If a parents son or daughter is sick they want to make sure they can go to the doctors see what’s wrong and fix it, but what about the parents who cant take their children to the hospital and they have to see their son or daughter in pain. California should start looking into other methods of raising 15.2 billion dollars because cutting out things we need does not seem like a reasonable thing to do.
I believe I-poly is in dire need of the money at the moment. From what i understand education is the what sets your future. Just about any job requires you to have some sort of education, and if we can’t get what we need to learn than what will happen to our future.
If there are cuts, i believe school will be in even more trouble that they are now. Seeing as I-poly doesn’t have enough text book and etc… For our govnor to veto the spending plan, i don’t know if this will set everything off balance though, it seems all to confusing. And i think it will be possible for school to close just because of this. Since no govnor has done this before it must have been for a reason, i am very interested how this wil play out.
In the united states the two things they shouldnt cut are education and the police focus. they shouldnt cut edcuation beacuse without education people wouldnt learn what they need to do
know for the jobs they have. People would lose jobs and becomne homeless and then homeless
rate will go up. they the Inited States over all ‘look would go down”. If people werent
edcuation in the feild they were working in that produce that they are making with suck.
if the united states cut the police force, then crime rate would go up, and the US wouldnt be a safe place to live in. Then the people of this country wouldnt want to buy anything because there always in sde trying not to get shoot, so then the state still wouldnt be making any money.
When they cut budgets from the government, it does make a big difference in the state. It can really damage the way people live.
When they cut back form schools, classes don’t have the money to pay for supplies, textbooks, visual learning for example computers. Without the budget, kids are not able to do lab experiments in chemistry, because they don’t have the right equipment to learn something new or even cool. Kids wouldn’t even be able to attend public schools because there wouldn’t be any teachers to teach the class.
Without firemen, people would loose homes; people don’t have the training that firemen do. Without policemen, the crime rate might go up, but criminals will be criminals. There would be more speeding on streets, freeways, and even in residential areas. When there are accidents, there would be no one to direct traffic. There probably wouldn’t even be someone to answer the 911 calls.
Public parks wouldn’t be maintained, the grass wouldn’t be taken care of. It would either be dried up or the grass would be really tall. It would most likely be dried, because there is no money to pay for the water. Sports for the kids wouldn’t be available. There wouldn’t be anyone to maintain the fields. The budget cut effect everyone in the state, even if they do not believe it does. Taxes will probably go up in sales taxes. The demands in food will go down and the demand of anything else will go down.
Majority seems to rule on this one, Education is clearly a high priority and so is Safety.
I have had first hand experiance of school budget cuts, young scholars are having a harder time finding classes to be enrolled in because of courses being closed indefinately; meaning others are filling up quite quickley. Another problem my family has encounters with education cuts, has been bus services. My brothers, mom and stepdad live in Rancho Cucamonga area, and they had a school bus stop right at the corner of their street. All the parents on Laurel Tree could see their children get on the bus before they had to leave for work. Due to the cuts the school sent an email out informing my mom and all other parents that their source of school transportation has been moved a few blocks away and closer to heavy traffic. When parents work in the morning they rely on school buses to get their children safely to and from school. When the kids have to walk or be dropped off at a corner where there is heavy traffic and lower visability how is the school or anyone else to promise the children will be safe from the time they are waiting until the bus picks them up? There was an ongoing debate with the school and many of the parents of students who attend Etiwanda Colony.
Secuity, well this is self explanitory…
If security is cut there will be a rise is chaos. End of story. Hours will be lost, officers on the road will be scarce and some may lose out on jobs. This alone would affect my family. My stepdad is a sheriff, he is a huge provider in my brothers lives and if his job were to be lost or hours were to be cut, money issues in my family would arise even moreso than now. Higher crime and less officers could result in many things; it could send more people to the hospital, traffic could worsen, vandalism could increase, there’s just no saying where things would go if there weren’t officers to keep the cool.
Everyone has something to say about where we should spend our money, but nobody seems to look at the consequences of any action they believe is the right one. If we cut education funds more kids could be out of school; college or any education, educational books could become more expensive, and not to mention, how are we to pay for our lives if we don’t have a solid occupation which pays well [and usually you need a high education for]?. Not everyone is a money expert, and based on what I’ve seen, we’re going to have a hard time getting out of this one… hold onto your hats, we’re in for a bumpy ride California.
Oh, I also forgot to put in my point of, if security gets cut there could be a rise in crime rates which could reult in sending people to the hospital… if we are having trouble with heath care now, without any security that could worsen as well.
I would have to agree with the republicans. If the democrats want to close the budget gap and increasing the taxes, it would be bad for all of us right now and in the future. We in America are already paying enough taxes for building roads and helping out with others. Just increasing the taxes would be a big hassle and I probably think that it would ruin us. The republicans want to close the budget gap and to cut the spending and the borrowing. I think that this would benefit us and plus we wouldn’t have to increase the taxes
I don’t know what we really need most, but what I think the state should not cut taxes from is Education and Health care. We need to have our schools funded so that the youth of California can grow up with the same knowledge we grew up with. If the state started cutting funds from schools we might lose teachers and that would probably mean larger class sizes. Colleges might get hit too and a lot of them are already heavy on tuition.
Besides education I think our state health plans, or the hospital services anyways, need all the funding they can get. Tons of children with cancer and adults with diseases are in and out of the hospital weekly and even daily, if we cut funds on our Health areas then we make it almost impossible for a lot of those patients to go to a hospital, with out paying an outrageous bill anyways. And if they don’t raise prices that would mean a cut in workers, creating a more crowded waiting room where several people already wait everyday, and that is where people get sick sometimes too.
So I guess I would have to say that Education and Health services deserve all the funding they can get, and should remain untouched when it comes to cutting funds, or even raising taxes.
I’m more prone to the republican, Not raising the taxes but cut spending and borrowing. Even though both of the party are doing the same thing, because government spent money to form some programs to help people. So if they cut the spending on some programs, also affects lots of people but not as much if you raise the taxes.
I think what our government should do is to really get a agreement on this thing as soon as possible. Like what Mr. purther had said, they just keep procrastinating on it, then borrow more money to solve the problem for NOW. Either way its a pain so why makes it hurt even more in the future? Maybe we can make a compromise on it. for instance we can raise taxes for a year and cut the spending on some unnecessary programs to work this thing out. Maybe this situation is way beyond what we think it is but it’s just an interpretive from a little citizen.
So. It seems to me that we are trying to pick the lesser evil here.
While republicans state that we should just cut the funding off the educational, safety and healthcare programs we need to keep in mind that they already did a lot of it last year. In 2008 they cut a lot of educational funding and it really affected us as I-polians. In the first college semester (2007) it didn’t sustain to much trouble to get in one of the classes up at Cal Poly. While the second semester (2008) people would barely get in classes because they would be so packed due to the fund cuts. MadiCal (Goverment Healthcare Provider) got cut off from some funding too, a lot of people ended up with no insurance. On the other hand, democrats state that tax increase will make it all better. Well it’s not like the taxes have been standing still for all this time. They are increasing, and it did not help to fix the problem either.
In my opinion no matter what they decide or have decided right now taxes WILL increase for the course of next 2 years. Just think about. Next year they are planning on decreasing the flight count by about 30%. That will cost California alone billions of dollars in tourism revenue. How do you think they are going to make up for that? I am almost positive, by increasing taxes.
Also since they passed the budget couple of days ago, their decision was just to put off all the debt and what not until next year. Well, we will still have to deal with it in near future. Some of the biggest companies are going bankrupt which causes U.S. government to give them money since the damage to the countries economy would be much bigger if they went bankrupt instead of giving them money out of the treasury. Where by the way our tax money goes to.
So if i have to say that the two most important things the government has to take care of are of course for obvious reasons education and healthcare. It is government’s duty no matter what to give it’s people a good education as those are the people in whose hands the future is. If there is no education there is no healthcare or safety or anything else for that matter. I mean being an immigrant one of the biggest reasons i came to this country is to get a good education. i strongly believe government has no right to cut it’s funding. It actually has to give much more money to it.
Healthcare…well without it we are pretty much helpless. Thousands of people die each year because government failed to give them the help they needed to pay for certain medications/insurance/procedures. People are scared to get sick in U.S. because the horrible healthcare system. I actually think that public healthcare would be much better. At least everyone would get help whenever they needed it.
The government needs to cut back on a lot of spending and borrowing because eventually we are goin to dig our selves into a hole that we will never be able to climb out of, and lots of Californians work for the state. I f we are not able to pay or budget then we will have massive consequences to deal with. There are so many people working for the state that if all of them were not able to get paid many of them would even show up to work, and the rest of California will suffer for the lack of people willing to help California function.
California should by no means cut all of educational spending, but they should definately cut back on some things in education. Most schools have the best of the best lab equipment, books, and extra curricular subjects, but that does not mean that every student that goes there passes with straigh A’s or B’s, and that certainly does not mean that most of them will go to college. No child left behind is simply a mean to get kids out of high school but after that then what. A person ony needs to get C’s and D’c to pass. What can they possibly do after that?
Health clinics should not be cut back, but California needs to seriously reconsider offering aid to illegal aliens. It is robbery from the tax payers. Welfare needs to be regulated as well as unemployment. Some wish to change the unemployment collection to 52 weeks. Well if a person cannot get a job after a year then they shouldnt be able to live of off the tax payers any more.
Tax should be raised on somethings just to collect enough money. But once again if we keep spending needlessly and barrowing we will never be able to get our selves out of debt.
I believe that if we had to close the 15.2 billion budget cut they show take the money from welfare. Like the government spends so much money on giving money to people on welfare yet they do nothing to better there situation. Many women that are in welfare keep having children just so they can get extra money for there kids. When you see women on welfare with one child and they need help that is fine. But when you have a women on welfare with one child and then know she is expecting a second child they should not give her money. Why would she go and get pregnant if she cannot afford to sustain one child how would she be able to sustain two. I believe they should help the ones that are in most need. And if they were to cut money they should not cut money out of schools. They should not cut out money off education because after all we are the future of the state. I see that schools never have sufficient funds to provide there students with the best materials for schools.
my bad i think i misspelled MediCal?
From what I know about the government’s role in my life I think education and heath care are the two biggest priorities for California.
Education is very important for the growth of our society. With out education we would not have any skills to work and conduct a normal life. Everyone needs an education in order to be a successful person in society. We can’t do any of this with out being healthy enough to go to school; so heath care is also very important. Healthy people can go to work make money and support themselves, their family and contribute to the community. Keeping people healthy is the greatest priority.
So when the government cuts back on health care and education everyone is affected. With out the money for proper books and school supplies students are not learning what they need to know to succeed. Even worse hospitals that are not fully equipped can’t help care for people. And if the sate is not supporting the health care industry the needs of the penitent are not taken care of and we end up with more sick people.
I can’t really pick which side to agree on because both of them make really good points. As far as raising taxes go, it’s not like it’ll be a permanent thing. We would just need it long enough to get ourselves out of debt. However, it should also be taken into consideration that the cost for living is already going up which has pretty much made it hard for everyone. In order to not have to make people pull too much money out of their pockets, we would also need to cut back on certain things that aren’t necessarily important. I think we would need to choose wisely, of course, on what we choose to cut back because who knows, it might come back and bite us in the butts later on. One thing for sure that the state should NOT cut back on is education. Why even consider it? Without education we wouldn’t have a strong foundation. Our education will really make in impact on our future and to take away from it would be utterly ridiculous. There should definitely just be a compromise. We need to increase taxes only to a certain extent and cut back on the things we don’t necessarily need at the moment.
I believe that the Democrats and the Republicans should reach a compromise in which taxes are not raised too much and there are not too many cuts. I believe that this would be the best approach for solving this problem because if we raise taxes too high, then obviously it would make life even harder. If we cut programs, it would make our education system even worse than it is now. I mean, you can only cut so much before you lose everything.
Cutting costs here in there without cutting too much means that it can help get money without affecting us on a large scale. The same with taxes. if we raise them just enough to complete the difference from the cuts, then we would have to pay less as opposed to only raising taxes.
I think that California’s top two priorities should keeping up the educational system and fire department system. California should keep up its funding towards education because the school systems are already failing. I think that money should be cut from the after school programs and computer funds at school so that top priority necessity can be bought. Items like desks, text books, and basic repairs should be accomplished immediately There’s so many schools that I’m aware off that don’t even have enough desks for all their students. its unfortunate things have degraded to what they are now. I asked the foreign exchange student in 11th grade at our school what he thinks of our school and he said he doesn’t like it, when i asked why he said that he said the schools to easy. I know a lot of people were struggling to get all their assignments done last year and it kind of put another perspective on how even at our school, people so behind compared to others in the world.
Next i think that money should still be kept in the fire department system because fires are clearly a very common thing in California. Last summer alone we had so many fires and it was very scary. It’s a shame global warming has slowly drained our land of its water and now the smallest spark has the power to send up entire hillsides in flames. Over the last few years ever summer has given birth to more and more fires who knows what our future hold but as long as we keep giving our fire fighters what they need to fight fires we might have a chance of sparing our homes!
In my opinon i believe that we should raise taxes so that we do not cut important programs that we need. In order for progrgams to get more money and keep running we need to raise taxes. I may cost people a bit more money but we are just gonna have to deal with it. Even though our learder may say we are not going into a recession the fact is that we are, and even one can feel the ecomic pressure no matter what your fanacial status is. But saving money by cutting programs should be our last response. The fact is that we need the funding for education because like many corny people may tell you children are our future and if they dont have money our the future will not be a pleasant one. Education should be our main priority, that way we our education system can actually produce a child that could be smart enough to lead this country out of it crises.
One of the most important things that the government should not cut is education. First of all education is required by law. And in order to have a fully functioning economy, we need people who are educated and skilled so they can work. The education of children is also needed because they are our future and some of them will help run the state or possibly the country in the future. If no one is educated then we have no future. Maybe one of the later generations may be able to completely solve the budget crisis and help us save money instead.
Another thing the government should not cut is healthcare. We need the workers to be taken care of because if everyone is injured then our production is decreased. The more people we have taken care of and working the more the money flows in our economy. Plus when people work and earn money, they are bound to spend it. And the happier the people are, the more they spend.
There are two main priorities that i think should not be cut down, and those are the educational and health care Programs. Educational because there are tests done saying that children that go to preschool program when there small have better chances of going to college. And i really advise not to cut those programs because when i was small i went to preschool and i feel like i had a better understanding right from the start in kindergarten and u might say wow kindergarten but trust going in there with a little knowledge of the basics helps out a lot. Another program i feel is important is the after school programs held at schools because there are kids that stay for help that really put interest in what they do. I know one specific person that has used the after school programs before ad that person is my brother because he used to struggle with English and reading but in his elementary school he stayed after school and got like three months of help just for those two subjects and i feel that those programs did really help my brother. In the other hand there are other programs that i feel are just a waste like summer school programs are just making life a lot easier for students and easier for them to slack off. People in Mexico that don’t pass a subject don’t pass a grade and they don’t have summer school to make it but in the USA u don’t pass a subject and you just go to summer school for a month and learn in a month what you had to learn in a year. I really don’t think the brain processes that way.
OK my other priority is health care benefits. I think there are a lot of people hurt due to the economy and most of those are lower class budget people and some of them don’t have health care or money and need to go to a community clinic or city clinic. And i feel these two are important to the lower class. But there is always a bad in everything and the bad that i think is welfare because they just give out money to people that can actually work but they are too lazy so they have children and live off of them and i feel these kind of programs are just making the people of the USA very lazy.
I believe that the government’s top two priorities should be education and health care. Our state needs as much education as they can. Education has a big influence on California’s future. School need as much money as they can get their hands on. This is because, in order for a school to have a stellar education, the school needs a lot of resources. When you cut down on a school’s budget, the schools’ supplies are reduced. This can can range from either not enough books for a class set to less classrooms for the students to learn in. If the amount of classrooms is reduced, the amount of students per class increase. This means that there are more students per teacher and less individual attention and help for those students. Education is really important to our society these days. People who are well educated are less likely to fall into gang related problems or end up in jail. By giving our students a good education, you also reduce street vandalism and crime.
Health care should be our second to priority. Many people can afford t pay full cost of medical expenses. People everyday go through financial struggles everyday because of medical needs. Sometimes people who dont have Health care, decide to just “wait if off” or “pretend they’re fine to prevent their children from living good lives. A lot of the times this can end up rally bad because if they have some disease or infection that could be cured with proper medical treatment, it could turn into something incurable and sometimes fatal, leaving their children without a father or mother figure and in some cases. homeless. This could also lead to street crime and gang related deaths.
If the government is planning to cut budgets on programs, i believe that they should avoid cutting them off of educational facilities and health care.
The two priorities are either increasing taxes or budget cuts. I strongly believe that they should raise taxes instead of making the budget cuts. Education is an important part of our lives and for our future. Education is our future and it should not be cut back. If we start cutting back on our education now, how is it going to be for the next generation? Our parents and elders should want us to succeed and get as much knowledge as we can, because we are their future. It is unfair because now it is harder to get into classes and it is affecting us, not them. Health care is another thing they should not cut back on. It is very important for us as well. We run more risk of people getting a disease without health care. That can hurt us in the future as well.
I believe there shouldn’t be any cuts on education and law enforcement. Those are our two main programs, and we would suffer dramatically if they get cut. Crime rates would increase with less police on the streets, and it will become even more dangerous. California is bad enough as it is, with its limited amount of law enforcement. Class sizes would increase if education gets cut, which would lead to less students acquiring much needed knowledge and there would also be unruly classrooms.The future for our economy and welfare of the people would look much brighter with a substantial education under their belts. With uneducated people how are we supposed to solve problems like the budget cuts?
But i also think there should be budget cuts on other things that aren’t as needed. We should have a combination of cuts on lesser programs and at least a slight increase in taxes. We can deal without that little extra dough, which would probably be spent on Starbucks or expensive clothing anyway. People complain about how little money they have and how bad taxes are but they still spend it on unnecessary items.
Im kind of on the fence with this one because we all need benefits and stuff and if it causes the government to raise tax then im not sure cause if they do raise taxes then thats more money out of the work forces paycheck. And these days the cost of living isnt cheap. i believe that health care and benefits like that should be comped because we as people support this country. I disagree with cutting all benefits or some or most or whatever because if we had to pay for things like that then americans would be in more deb then they already are!
I think that two of the top priorities that the US should not take away is of course education and secondly all the welfare programs that help out the poor and needy. Education is the heart of our future and should not be cut down simply because the government became a woman with a credit card. High school students should not have to pay the price of others’ mistakes. If we are forced to pay these mistakes we will also be forced to leave the future of this country in very weak hands. Our education is our future and if the teenagers of this country don’t have a future neither does the country. For example, as schools began to cut after school programs and electives they force students to not have anything to do but be out on the street and end up in trouble. Programs like art, dance, drama, sports, etc help out our teenage population to keep us busy and on a good track. Without these things we are forced to be out doing other things that may not be very good.
Cutting welfare programs would only leave a bigger number of people out on the streets. I don’t think that is something that we want emphasized about our country. Everyday you see more and more homeless people out on the streets and so reducing all the programs that help the needy will really not make things any better.
These are the two priorities that the country should not reduce.
Based on the two articles that I read about California’s buget one of the state’s two priorities are to close the buget gap and fing out how to get out of the enormous $15.2-billion debt we are in and the second one is to not afect or cut payments made to schools, medical clinics, daycare centers and state vendors.
In my opinion the top two priorities they should not cut at all is Education and Safety. Education bacause if teachers, principles or schools don’t find a way to provide their students with the resources necessary to continue teaching then students will not learn with as much enthusiasm. For the other part I believe that Safety is also very important because if they cut Safety (specifically police safety) then there won’t be as many policemen to carry out the law enforcement and without policemen a city might go to caos because they won’t be there to controll the citizens.
There seems to be agreement.
Protect programs from (some examples)
(a) Education (usually managed by the state, but does not some federal involvement-e.g. NCLB)
(b) Health Care (State-Med Cal Federal-Medicare)
(c) Safety (Federal-FBI, ATF State-Highway Patrol City/County: Sheriff, Police)
(d) Welfare (State-job training, unemployment insurance, aid)
Any further cuts in educational budget would be the most harmful thing the government can do at this point. Education is already suffering enough as it is and for it to suffer even more would be repulsive. Its telling the students of California that the government could care less about their future. Further cuts in education would take a step back from any hope of getting out of this mess. it makes the future generation more apathetic to the state as a whole. as a student, i have already felt this apathy take hold.
The next mistake in budget cut consideration would be closing down services for the disabled. what does this say about how we treat our people? and not just any people, but the people who need help the most. this does however open up opportunities for the community itself to help out ie donations and volunteering.
All three possible solutions sound flawed. the democrats just want to pay the bills on time by any means necessary, the republicans want to cut of support of programs that help benefit the people of California, and the governor wants to start a safety net that really doesn’t help the immediate problem. However in the end, perhaps the rainy day fund may be our best option and will hopefully prevent a problem like this from reoccurring.