LifeinAsia - 3:49 pm on Jun 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

The current budget situation can be blamed on BOTH Reps and Dems- it is a matter of overspending year after year after year and creating unrealistic budgets with smoke and mirrors and continually pushing payments into the next fiscal year so that the current year "balances."

Yes, Prop 13 can shoulder some of the blame. But Prop 13 has been around for decades- during that entire time the politicians continued on a spending spree, even though they knew revenue would be limited because of it.

The Democrats want to keep raising taxes. Well, if they keep killing income sources and forcing taxpayers out of the state to more business-friendly ones, it's still going to be a net loss. Higher taxes/regulation forces more businesses out of state. That means less corporate income tax, fewer individual taxpayers (from the employees that follow the company out of state), and more on the unemployment dole (those former employees who don't follow the company out of state and can't find another job locally). Also, because of fewer businesses and employees and more unemployed, that's even LESS money to spend at local businesses- so the effect hits other businesses as well.

At some point they are going to be past the tipping point where the business environment is so bad that the state will never recover. Hopefully, we haven't gotten to that point yet!