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Governor Jerry Brown released his May budget revision, and friends, it's not pretty.
Our fearless leader is hoping to address the state's $16 million deficit by cutting programs like Medi-Cal, asking state workers to take a pay cut, and reducing spending on in-home services.
Additionally, Brown will ask voters in November to pass a tax increase initiative, whereby all Californians will pay more sales tax, and rich Californians will pay more income tax. Those funds, he says, will go to critical state programs like education. If the initiative fails, K-12 education will suffer an automatic reduction of $5.5 billion, and both the Cal State and the University of California systems would have their budgets slashed by $250 million.
Here are some more specific numbers, provided at a press conference earlier today:
- All told, the governor's cuts would total more than $8 billion.
- The plan would cut $544 million from the court system
- By closing government offices one day a week and reducing state employees' hours to 38 hours, the budget would save $400 million.
- Cuts to Medi-Cal would increase to $1.2 billion.
