Austerity Cuts into Unemployment

If you want to find out what is happening with the California State budget drive a bus delivering folks to their programs. Last week I stopped by a program that offers rehabilitation to the aging to help restore their mobility and other physical capabilities and the front desk person told me they are being shut down as a result of the $11.6 billion in state budget cuts. Yesterday it was an assistant teacher who received a pink slip and ask me to pray for her job. This is my prayer for her.

I know that teachers are planning a sit-in for the Capital Rotunda trying to highlight that another $15 billion in cuts will be coming if we don’t raise some taxes, but what about the first set of cut backs. California’s unemployment rate is one of the highest in the country at 12%, that’s 2,176,333 officially counted out of work Californians. The $11.6 billion in cuts will mean that another 100,000 plus will lose their jobs. That will move our UI rate back up to 12.5% where it was at the pinnacle of this recession.

Offering a referendum on raising $2 billion from the millionaires or $1 billion with a oil severance tax just won’t fix this crisis. We have a real need to change the course that our state government is heading. If we are to prevent an economic catastrophe we need to raise $26 billion and there is only one plan out there now that will do that. The 1.5% tax on business revenue compares well to the combined 1% sales tax increase, the 0.5% vehicle license fee increase, plus an income tax increase that only covers $15 billion.

Our choices are clear, continue down this path of raising taxes primarily on the working poor while at the same time laying off over 100,000 workers and denying services to the elderly, children, and those in medical need, or raise a tax on all businesses that will be shared by all Californians.

For more information on the 1.5% business revenue tax read below.