BTW, you might enjoy this, Brian. It discusses the need to limit spending increases to population growth plus inflation. One thing to consider, though, is that the way we measure CPI has changed. If we were to use the old CPI methodology (which would have shown much higher inflation in the 1990-2008/2009 period), was our spending really out of whack?
What changes have caused our spending to rise so high?
Having worked in public education, I would contend that a big portion of these increased expenditures have to do with illegal immigration. A huge portion of our budget (~40%, IIRC) is allocated to education (prisons, healthcare, and “welfare” accounts for most of the rest, and these are also highly impacted by illegal immigration). You can’t discuss the budget without delving into the details.
FWIW, here is one account that says we are not overspending, based on population growth and inflation:
“Analyzing the 2008-09 budget bill last year, the legislative analyst determined that since 1998-99, spending in the general fund and state special funds — the latter comes from special levies like gasoline and tobacco taxes — had risen to $128.8 billion from $72.6 billion, or 77%.
During this time frame, which embraced two booms (dot-com and housing) and two busts (ditto), the state’s population grew about 30% to about 38 million, and inflation charged ahead by 50%. The budget’s growth, the legislative analyst found, exceeded these factors by only an average of 0.2% a year.
My calculations show that the combined growth factors would have allowed the budget to grow even more. But for the purpose of argument, let’s use the legislative analyst’s more conservative number. That punctures the notion that the state has been on a drunken spending spree out of proportion to these common multipliers.
Here’s what’s been happening to our population since 1990. This is from 1996:
For the first time in 200 years, a non-white group contributed more to annual population increase than non-Hispanic whites. According to the Census report, “U.S. Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin: 1990-1995,” in 1993-94, the US Hispanic population increased by 902,000, and the non-Hispanic white population increased by 883,000.
The US population is expected to increase by 2.4 million per year, from 263 million in 1995 to 394 million in 2050. Fueled by immigration–the Census assumed a net influx of 820,000 legal and illegal immigrants annually– and births to immigrants, the Hispanic and Asian populations in the US are expected to grow by over three percent per year, faster than the growth of Mexico’s population in 1995, which was 2.2 percent per year. The white population is projected to increase by about 0.4 percent per year.
There are about 24 million foreign-born persons in the US–immigrants who moved to the US from other countries are about nine percent of all US residents. Most are in the US legally, the number of unauthorized aliens in the US is believed to be about four million. About 75 percent of the legal immigrants, and 85 percent of the unauthorized aliens, are believed to be in six states–California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois.
Many of the welfare programs being debated in Congress aim to prevent children from growing up poor. According to a recent Government Accounting Office review of census data, about 17 percent of the school-aged children (five through 17) were living in households with below poverty-level incomes in 1990–some 7.6 million children.
However, 31 percent of the school-aged children in households headed by immigrants lived in poverty– 709,000– including 43 percent of the children in households headed by an immigrant from Mexico–299,000–and 40 percent of the children in households headed by an immigrant from Vietnam–46,700.
[As a sidenote, I thought this quote was oddly funny; as if households with 3-4 incomes could be considered “middle class” in America]:
Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan predicted that, “in 15 years, Los Angeles will again be a town with a strong middle class, mainly Latinos and Asians. They will make relatively less money than the average middle-class citizen today, but there will be more houses with two, three or four wage-earners.”
Let me explain why this makes a difference. In the school where I worked, we had a 90%+ Hispanic population, with many (most, from what I could tell, but you’re not allowed to ask, by law) of those students were either illegal immigrants or children of illegal immigrants. Note: most of the kids were sweeter than most American kids I know, and their parents were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. It’s not about “immigrant bashing,” it’s about an honest account of our state’s resources, and how we have to allocate them.
Anyway, we were a Title I/Chapter I school, and got extra funding from the federal government and the state. The majority of schools that serve the illegal immigrant communities qualify for this extra funding, while most of the schools in California that serve “traditional” U.S. citizens (not of illegal parents) do not qualify for this funding.
Our school had a full-time nurse, full-time P.E. teacher, full-time psychologist, full-time bilingual coordinator, full time attendance coordinator, full-time librarian, two-three assistant principals, three full-time secretaries, etc. “Normal” schools are lucky to have one F/T secretary and a part-time nurse. All the other positions have to be paid for by the PTA (parent-funded), IF they get it, in “normal” schools.
We also got all the latest and greatest as far as school supplies, and WERE NOT ALLOWED to ask parents to supply anything at all — no pencils, paper, paint, scissors, etc. The taxpayers provided everything, and then some. In “normal” schools, most of these daily supplies are teacher or parent-funded.
Our school had multiple copy/fax machines, laminators, etc. One of the schools I had worked for in a “better” neighborhood had to hold a fundraiser to buy a copy machine.
So many of our students qualified for free breakfast and lunch that it cost them more to collect the tickets (for qualified breakfast/lunch recipients) than it was to feed everyone, so they just went to 100% free breakfasts and lunches. We were a year-round school, so these meals were being served every day, with the exception of two weeks between Christmas and New Year.
Every classroom also had either a full-time or part-time (half-day) T.A. Every one. Good luck with that in a “normal” school.
We had two sets of learning material (you have no idea how expensive all the textbooks, workbooks, manipulatives, etc. are) — one in English, and one in Spanish for many of the bilingual classes. We got new books almost every year. We had a state-of-the-art computer lab, and anything you could ever want. It took years before the “normal” schools got these things.
And then there was the extra stipend for bilingual teachers. I think they eliminated it, but heard again that they might have gotten it back (I’ve been out for over 10 years).
These are just a few things off the top of my head. Until we are able to have an honest discussion about the costs involved with illegal immigration, we will not be able to tackle our budget problems.
