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California is in the process of making some very difficult choices in order to get its fiscal house in order, Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday, but the nation's most populous state is not like Europe and it will emerge from these budget cuts stronger.

"We're not some tired country of Europe. We're a buoyant, dynamic society that will both discipline itself on a daily basis but it will on the long-term plant the seeds of future growth, Brown said in an interview with "CBS This Morning."

California, often called the the world's 9th largest economy, is facing a budget deficit of about $16 billion. That's much more than the $9 billion Brown predicted in January and stems from weaker-than-expected economic growth.

Brown has collected more than 1.5 million signatures for a ballot initiative that would allow voters to decide directly whether to adopt his plan to raise the income tax rate on the wealthy and hike the sales tax rate on everyone.

The budget plan would increase the sales tax to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent and raise income taxes on those making more than $250,000.

"Combined with that, we're making some very drastic cuts in almost every area of state government. So we are going to start living within our means -- something that hasn't truly happened for the better part of 30 years," Brown said.

"There's a day of reckoning, and government does a lot of good things. When it does more good things than it has money to pay for them, it becomes a bad. So we're gonna have to cut some good in order to avoid some bad, Brown said.

"It's not easy, the last several governors have faced difficulty in actually achieving that, but I feel that at this stage in my life, this is what I have been called upon to do, and God willing, I'm going to do it," he added. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57436905/gov-jerry-brown-says-c
alifornia-is-not-a-tired-european-country/?tag=exclsv

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*Only a minority of Californians bother voting.
*The minority that votes is sorted into highly partisan districts. The result is that whoever wins the primary by pandering to the most rabid elements of their base is elected, and the legislature is full of deranged extremists. The state may be full of reasonable people; the legislature is not.
*Thus, neither party has any incentive to compromise or show any degree of moderation, ever.

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*Even better, any budget requires a 2/3 majority. Any tax increase requires a 2/3 majority. The Republicans and Democrats can not work together, and the Republican minority is able to effectively block any tax or budget proposal, resulting in pathetic and futile stop gap measures.
*The proposition system, originally a progressive measure to fight the power of the rail roads, resulted in Prop 13 (see below) and a recall disaster. The proposition system is broken.
*Prop 13 drastically limited property taxes, permanently limited state revenues, starved county governments, and is virtually unassailable.

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*Californians of all political persuasions have an endless appetite for government services, and refuse to pay for them.

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