California passes budget after scathing battle

Take-home pay for Californians is about to shrink. Jeans, hammers, burgers and fries will cost more. Public school children will have to use old textbooks and find more classmates sitting next to them. Parents will receive fewer tax benefits, and state university students will pay 9 percent more in tuition.

The pact contains $14.8 billion in spending cuts, including to public transit, health care, schools and the courts; $12.5 billion in tax increases; $5.4 billion in new borrowing; and the creation of a $1 billion reserve fund.

Personal income tax rates will rise by one-quarter of a percent, and the state sales tax will climb by 1 percentage point, to 6 percent, though each county will have different rates and the average will be 8.9 percent. The state’s vehicle license fee — which Mr. Schwarzenegger abolished with great theatrics when he took office in 2003 — will nearly double, to 1.15 percent of the value of the vehicle.
Left on the cutting-room floor was a proposed 12-cent increase in the gasoline tax lawmakers filled the gap instead with $600 million in cuts and an infusion of federal stimulus money.

Allright, every state in the United States has financial problems nowadays due to the economic crisis but I think that Mr. Scharzenegger and his colleagues are taking the wrong measures here.
Governments need to take measures that gives people the oppurtunity to spend more money in these times in order to increase prosperity according to me.
The more money that people have, the more they will spend and the more that others, including the government, will profit from it. Mr. Swarzenegger is doing the opposite now, fewer tax benefits, even an increase of taxes and an education that is getting more expensive (and worse!). An other problem is the fact that the government is creating a big problem for the future with the huge costs for the intrests of such a loan.
I really don’t understand that they didn’t approve the proposal for a 12-cent increase in the gasoline tax. It is common known that there are too many cars on the roads and that the U.S has difficulties with reaching their goals for less pollution. This could have been a win-win situation here. But I guess it is just un-American to raise taxes on gasoline.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/20california.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1