State Budget Advocacy Continues
June 26th, 2009by Colleen Rivecca
Two of the most popular topics for conversation in the St. Anthony Foundation Dining Room are sports and politics. Today’s blog entry on the state budget will capture that spirit, because the easiest way to understand what’s happening with the state budget negotiations is to compare them to a football game.
This week, the Democrats threw two incomplete passes: one Wednesday (with a vote on alternate cuts package that failed) and one Thursday (with a vote on cash flow bills that failed). This means that we have returned to the line of scrimmage: advocates for social and health services have neither gained nor lost ground, but we have lost two precious days of negotiations.
Senate leader Darrell Steinberg gave a hint at the behind the scenes demands by the Governor and the Republicans when he stated,
“We don’t take pledges in our caucus like some do but if we did it would sound like this: We are not going to eliminate CalWORKs, we are not to eliminate Healthy Families, we are not going to eliminate IHSS and and we are not going to eliminate CalGrants. We are not going to eliminate the safety net. You need to know where we are not going to go.”
What does this mean for advocates who want to take action against harmful cuts to health and social service programs? As the legislature returns to square one (or third down, or whatever), so must we! We need to make calls, calls, calls!
This weekend, call your legislators and the Governor and tell them that you support a budget that uses revenue enhancement measures to mitigate the worst of the proposed cuts to the safety net. This information sheet makes it easy to know who to contact, and what type of message needs to be delivierd to particular legislators.
Let’s set aside a few minutes this weekend to call our state leaders and tell them some decisions are inconceivable when measured against the human toll left in their wake.
Tags: budget cuts, dining room, sacramento, schwarzenegger, sports