Clean it up yourself, Arnold

California got itself into this mess, California should get itself out.  I shouldn’t have to (yet again) pay for someone elses’ poor decisions, and neither should you.

Facing a budget deficit of more than $20 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for deep reductions in already suffering local mass transit programs, renew his push to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast and appeal to Washington for billions of dollars in federal help, according to state officials and lobbyists familiar with the plan.

If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back — if not eliminate — CalWORKS, the state’s main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.

Then cut them.  Y’all wanted your big government utopia, you got it, and now you want another big government to come bail you out because it didn’t actually work.  If it worked, there would be no poor people in California.

The governor and lawmakers have already had to close shortfalls this year totaling $60 billion, as tax revenues plummeted at rates not seen in California since the Great Depression. Amid the continuing budget crisis, the state ran short of cash needed to cover its bills and was forced to issue IOUs over the summer.

Activists were particularly alarmed by the potential cuts to social service programs, which have taken big hits recently.

“Families are struggling, we have an incredibly high unemployment rate, and we can’t afford to cut these programs any more,” said Nancy Berlin, director of California Partnership, a statewide coalition of advocates for the poor based in Los Angeles. “Sacramento has got to pull it together and find another way out of this. They can’t take more from low-income families. If they do, we will find more people on the streets.”

Take more?  No, what you are asking is to take more from me.  I didn’t have anything to do with the failure in California.