It’s Just My Opinion
By Harris Sherline
Senator Tom McClintock Tells It Like It Is
Just about everywhere we look in government today, we see overspending, lack of discipline and self-control, political pandering, taxpayers being taken advantage of by a Mandarin class of bureaucrats who run things, and politicians who generally consider themselves “above” the voters who put them in office.
Almost everyone I know is concerned about the profligate ways of our government. Many are seriously concerned that we are spending ourselves into the poor house and that America is very likely to end up on the “ash heap of history” if it does not stop.
One of the leading exponents of fiscal responsibility in government has long been state Senator Tom McClintock, who will soon be term-limited out of the California legislature and who ran for Lt. Governor in 2006, losing to Democrat rival, John Garamendi.
Senator McClintock is a tireless campaigner for fiscally responsible government. He has been traveling up and down the state promoting his view of this critical issue and bringing a challenging message to the people of California. It is at once a bleak assessment of California’s fiscal condition, how we got into the financial mess we are in, while at the same time, a call to take action to get ourselves out of the near fatal predicament our politicians have created.
He was recently the keynote speaker at the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association’s (SBCTA) 50th Anniversary event in Los Olivos (June 14), where he clearly articulated his view of the situation in California today.
Following are some of the key excerpts from his presentation, which I consider to be one of the most important messages we have heard from any politician in years:
• According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, this administration is on track to have spent a cumulative $10 billion more than it has taken in by its fifth year.
• When we recalled Davis, state government consumed a record-shattering $8.80 out of every hundred dollars of your income. An all time high. Today, that figure is $9.58 out of every hundred dollars of your earnings.
• Meanwhile, the number of state employees is now growing at nearly twice the rate of population growth.
• According to the Legislative Analyst… we’ll be facing a $5 billion budget gap beginning on July 1st of next year without the funds to cover it.
• If the current course continues, the state will be insolvent in a little over a year. Meanwhile, the administration is pushing $40 billion in additional general funds borrowing for the 2008 ballot on top of more than $40 billion just approved last November.
• The state’s current obligation to pay lifetime health benefits to state employees has been conservatively estimated to impose $48 billion of additional costs to California taxpayers. And unfunded pension obligations to the PERS and STRS systems – also on the backs of California taxpayers -- are now hovering around $55 billion.
• The governor has proposed the second biggest tax increase in California’s history to pay for a portion of his “universal health care” plan – an amount the Legislative Analyst warns is at least $3 billion short.
• Last year the Census Bureau reported that 287,000 more people LEFT California for other states than moved in. Our population growth is now entirely babies and foreign immigration, most of it illegal. To put it in perspective, in 2006, California suffered a greater loss of domestic population than Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. (So there is significant statistical evidence to support the conclusion that California’s public policy has done more damage to California than Hurricane Katrina did to Louisiana).
• Where is the breaking point? I don’t know. It could be postponed for a few years by consuming future revenues to paper over current deficits. That’s the essence of the Governor’s proposal to lease the state lottery to a private consortium for the next forty years. It was the essence of his Proposition 57 in 2004. But every such gimmick further exacerbates and complicates the problem for the next generation. Like the law of gravity, the law of holes is immutable: “When you’re in one – stop digging.”
• …the state government’s usurpation of local revenues and prerogatives has destroyed accountability and imposed a one-size-fits-all approach to every problem – real or imagined -- that wastes enormous resources. And it has turned the state budget into a grab-bag of local pork projects, literally robbing Piedmont to pay Pomona.
• California government employees now receive 40-percent more in wages and 60-percent more in benefits than private sector employees doing the same work while paying the taxes to support this new Mandarin class.
• Freedom of commerce has been so severely constrained that it is now moving to bypass California in a textbook illustration of McClintock’s fourth law of political physics: Commerce will move around any obstacles placed in its path
• The fundamental right to own property is being lost by a perversion of medieval concepts like eminent domain (seizing one person’s property for the financial gain of another) and escheat (Looting safe deposit boxes and retirement accounts on the fiction that after three years they have been abandoned
• How are we to restore constitutional limits to government; restore the separation between state and local government; restore the balance of political power between the public and the public’s servants and restore our most fundamental freedoms as Americans?
• I believe a crisis is coming that will galvanize the public. Our job as individual citizens is to raise the alarm; raise the public’s awareness – and to this end we have tools that make that work infinitely easier – such as the internet and talk radio that now augment the political pamphlets and public meetings of our forbearers.
• …People are angry; they are frustrated; and they are becoming increasingly alarmed. They might be turned off but they are not tuned out – quite the contrary, they are beginning to shift their time and attention to public affairs – not because they want to, but because they sense they have to….
• …Events are moving faster every day, I do believe that we are fast approaching a great climacteric where we will – each of us – have the opportunity to make a profound difference in the direction of our state and our nation. And we must. After all, what has happened to California has happened on our generation’s watch, and it is our generation’s responsibility to set things right.
Senator McClintock is performing a great public service, issuing a Clarion call to the people of this state. If they are do not listen and fail to act on his admonition, it’s easy to see that the state of California will continue sinking further into the deep financial hole that our politicians have been digging for us. This will eventually cause more pain and disruption than most people can possibly imagine. Look around. It’s not hard to see what the problem is, if we are willing to face it. And, we must act to put a stop to it! But, that’s just my opinion.
© 2007 Harris R. Sherline,
All Rights Reserved
NOTE: There is a great deal more in Senator McClintock’s presentation that could not be included in this article for lack of space. I recommend you read the complete text, which I will be happy to email to anyone who contacts me at: hrs.wordsmith@yahoo.com. It’s a shocking but fascinating read. HRS