Sacramento, California - Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a tough new round of 5.5 billion dollars in budget cuts after voters rejected a series of fiscal measures backed by the former action movie star. The proposals would dramatically curtail spending on health care, higher education, welfare and the vaunted state park system, as well as reducing spending on AIDS treatment and prisoner rehabilitation.
The reductions came on top of 16 billion dollars in cuts Schwarzenegger unveiled two weeks ago, and are expected to be followed by further 3 billion in cuts that are designed to meet the state's expected 24.3-billion-dollar shortfall.
The cuts were sent to the legislature late Tuesday and immediately sparked a storm of protest from union members, who claimed that their members would be forced below the poverty line, and that the elderly and disabled would be deprived of care if the proposals were passed.
Many lawmakers were also taken aback by the proposals.
"It shocks the conscience that we have to throw sick children off of welfare to satisfy Wall Street," said Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, the budget committee chairwoman. "This used to be the Golden State, and now it is a sorry state and it is not my California."
Among the steps proposed is the elimination of a 1.6-billion- dollar programme that provides health care for almost 1 million children. Other controversial cuts include slashing the pay of workers who give in house care for elderly and disabled people.
The unprecedented budget crisis comes as Schwarzenegger prepares to step down next year, seven years after taking office with a pledge to reform California's tangled finances.
The governor insists that the voters demanded the reductions by rejecting a slate of ballot measures last week that would have raised 5.8 billion dollars to fill the budget gap, and warned that the state government would become insolvent unless he and lawmakers dramatically scaled back state programmes.
"Behind every one of those dollars that we cut there are real faces," Schwarzenegger said. "I know that that could mean potentially that now Alzheimer's patients will not get this in-home service that they deserve. But you know something? Even though those are tough choices, what is the alternative?"
