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Since Californians overwhelmingly rejected his propositions last week in the special election, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released his latest budget plan detailing $5.5 billion in cuts from a deficit estimated to be $24.3 billion by July 1 (that's higher than the $21.3 billion that was touted in the last few weeks).
One of the programs would eliminate the state's welfare program, making California the only state in the country without such a service. "Every single first-world nation has a safety net program for children," said Will Lightbourne, Santa Clara County's social services director, to the Mercury News. "This would return us to the era of Dickens — you'd have to go back to the 19th century to find a comparable proposal."
Other program cuts include dropping 1 million poor children from health insurance, cutting off new grants for college students and shuting down 80 percent of state parks, according to the paper.
