Why Schwarzenegger's "Legacy" Claim is a Fraud

The day before the California Legislature passed the third patchwork version of California's budget in 10 months, Gov. Schwarzenegger took to "Flashreport," the state's leading conservative Web site, to claim "a huge win."

"(T)he biggest winner to emerge from our negotiations is California," the governor bragged, "our state's legacy, its priorities, and its budget stability."

Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

Schwarzenegger's triumphalist braying was little more than a one-step-ahead-of-the-posse exercise in spin control, a pathetically transparent bid to establish a positive narrative for the budget disaster over which he's presided, in hopes that voters and his suck-up pals in the national media will buy his story without bothering to check it out.

(Note To National Political Writers: Schwarzenegger did not solve or stabilize California's budget. Despite his assertion to the contrary, his budget -- passed in February and now revised twice -- actually raised taxes by $12.5 billion. With the latest revision, he threw off enough ballast to keep his hot air balloon afloat but in no particular direction.)

As Fred Keeley, the elected treasurer of Santa Cruz County, put it:

The governor set the standard when he said, at the start of the process, that this needs to be a complete solution. And then he violated his own standard by signing a budget which doesn't solve the problem this year or next year and in fact, according to the Legislative Analyst and the Department of Finance, is going to create a multi-billion-dollar deficit next year.

Keeley knows wherearnoldbuckof he speaks. He served on the Assembly Budget Committee for six years, was asked by former Gov. Gray Davis to be Finance Director and is a Senate appointee to the Governor's 21st Century Commission on the Economy.

In truth, Arnold's entire tenure has been one continuous failure of leadership. This is just the latest chapter.

By Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine, Calbuzz.

Read the rest here.

Follow Phil Trounstine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ptrounstine

Comments

[OakRaidFan]

The main reason Schwarzenegger's "legacy" is a fraud is because the LAO (Legislative Analyst Office)
said that if he had raised the VLF (Vehicle License Fee - car tax) back up to its statutoril­y-mandated level of 2% upon taking office after the '03 recall election, CA would currently have a budget surplus. Surplus. SURPLUS. Instead, he lowered it down to 0.65%. Last month (June), he finally raised it up to 1.15%, which is still almost one-half of where it should be, by law. CA Attorney General Jerry Brown
should investigate if this is even legal. Regardless, he threw out a law, and a minimum funding level,
which had been around since the 1940s, and which Californians had been paying since the 1940s, all for a lousy, stupid, campaign promise. A half-dozen years later, he has literally broken CA's bank. Think about it: all of these people are suffering all of this pain, because a greedy few wanted to pay a few less bucks when they got their registration tags at DMV. This is a crime that should be reversed.