California legislators in the US were battling to keep the state from defaulting on its debts, unable to pay its bills, and from slashing many programmes. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $16 billion in cuts in order to close a $24b deficit. Democratic legislators have proposed tax increases, spurned by Republicans. The Obama administration has refused to bail the state out for fear of sending a wrong signal to other states in difficulties. California is the world’s eighth-largest economy, and has been particularly hurt by the downturn. Its revenues are heavily dependent on income taxes. Reuters, WP, Bloomberg

Posted by Sean Ecker on 17 June 2009 at 8:53 | permalink
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News story, GenevaLunch, 17 June 2009.

Filed under: World news

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.