Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California formally declared a fiscal emergency in the largest US state on Wednesday and called state legislators back into a special session to close a budget deficit expected to reach US$24 billion over the next two years.
The move came as California, which has a US$2.8 billion cash shortage, said it would not be able to pay some of its bills starting yesterday.
Schwarzenegger said in his proclamation that the cash shortage would grow to US$6.5 billion by September unless the state legislature makes huge cuts in services ranging from education to poverty programs.
If the state is unable to pay its bills, he said, “Californians will be placed at serious risk because essential public assistance services are no longer being provided.”
He also issued an executive order mandating that many state offices close the first, second and third Friday each month through next June. Employees at those offices, which issue everything from drivers’ licenses to building permits, will have their pay reduced by those three days each month.
State hospitals, prisons and the California Highway Patrol will not be subjected to such cuts.
The state, whose economy would rank eighth in the world if California was a country, has been struggling with fiscal problems this year. Schwarzenegger and legislators thought they had averted the worst of the crisis when they devised a package of potential solutions in mid-February, but voters rejected all of those proposals in mid-May.
The cash shortage has become more acute due to dwindling tax revenues. California has been hit harder than most states during the national economic crisis, with unemployment of 11.5 percent and a high rate of house foreclosures. The national unemployment rate is 9.4 percent.
The governor had given legislators until Tuesday night, the end of the state’s fiscal year, to come up with a comprehensive plan for solving the budget crisis.
“Though the legislature failed to solve our budget problem yesterday, rest assured that solving the entire deficit remains my first and only priority, and I will not rest until we get it done. I will not be a part of pushing this crisis down the road — the road stops here,” Schwarzenegger said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS