[GPCA Updates] NEWS RELEASE: Green Party of California attacks latest billion-dollar budget cuts

[Green Party of California Updates]

NEWS ADVISORY
Green Party of California
http://www.cagreens.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 24, 2011
	

Green Party of California attacks latest billion-dollar
budget cuts to poor, and elderly; Governor's action
called 'unconscionable' and lacking 'guts'

SACRAMENTO – The Green Party of California attacked Gov. Brown's
slashing more than $11 billion from the state budget late Thursday,
calling the actions avoidable if only the Governor and the Legislature
had "guts."

Brown signed legislation approving higher community college fees,
eliminating Adult Day Health Care, and cutting monies from
welfare-to-work grants and First5 childhood development funds.

"The governor calls these cuts 'painful,' but he's not the one trying to
take care of a young child, or a frail, aging senior, or trying to pay
for an education at a community college," said Laura Wells, 2010 Green
Party candidate for Governor of California. "These cuts are
unconscionable."

"The governor said he 'had to do something,' so then why didn't he and
lawmakers have the guts to find a way to tax the very wealthy and
corporations who pay no tax in this state?" asked Wells.
"There are ways to do this, but they must have the will to do so."

Wells called the budget cuts a "tax the poor scheme, and said "while
prison budgets are being protected, the opportunities of the young for a
better education are cut."

   "Since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, California budget
allocations have slighted education.
This is true at the preschool and K-12 grade levels, and in the area of
higher education as well. We will never have a quality educational
system until we provide adequate funding," she said.

"People have a growing sense of their own power as they witness ordinary
people - many of them young - take down an Egyptian dictator. They are
inspired by people in Wisconsin. People are beginning to see through
statements by lawmakers such as Gov. Brown who claim 'there are no
alternatives,' because there are," said Wells.

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