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Posted by: thepinetree on 01/25/2010 06:50 PM Updated by: thepinetree on 01/25/2010 06:50 PM
Expires: 01/01/2015 12:00 AM
:

Governor Participates in Q&A at Sacramento Press Club Luncheon

1/25/2010 - Governor Schwarzenegger delivered remarks and participated in a Q&A session at the Sacramento Press Club Luncheon...."MR. EHISEN: All right, thank you very much. Well, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is no stranger to facing difficult challenges. This is a good thing, considering that 2010 is already chockfull of them, including a budget deficit of almost $20 billion and ongoing struggles with the prison system, etc.....




But as those of us who have followed this gentleman's career know, he is nothing if not optimistic. Entering his final year in office the governor is hoping to build on the momentum of last year's historic water reform package to hammer out other reforms and to try to solve this budget issue.

So here with us for the seventh time, please welcome the 38th governor of the state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause)

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Well, thank you very much, Rich, for your nice introduction. You were right, you did it short and sweet.

But it's great to see all of you again and to be back here again. And it is amazing, when you think about it, that it is the seventh time that I'm doing this Press Club lunch here. And over the years, of course, when I look out there, faces have changed -- which of course is nothing new, because I come from Los Angeles where faces really change a lot, (Laughter) but for different reasons. But anyway, there are also, of course, a lot of faces that are the same here and it is nice to all of you. And of course I'm very happy that after my prepared remarks I'm going to take your questions and I will answer them as well as I can.

And so let me get started here. First of all, let me just say that when it comes to our economy I think that our state, our country and the world is still facing, as you know, a major crisis. Even though here in California we have seen signs of economic recovery but I think that people can't live off signs, so I think the people are still disappointed of what's going on and they are struggling. There are millions of Californians -- bless you -- there are millions of people that are struggling still.

And that is why my first priority and, as I said in the State of the State Address, my first priority is to create jobs and to bring the economy back. And this is why I also announced a Jobs Initiative that we estimate could create up to 100,000 new jobs. I mentioned there are five pieces of my proposal, which is:

* The $400 million of hiring tax credits and retraining employees,
* A measure to streamline the permitting of construction projects,
* An extension of the homebuyers tax credit for new homes and for existing homes,
* A proposal to exempt the purchase of green technology manufacturing equipment from the sales tax,
* And, of course, tort reform.

Now, I know the legislators have their own ideas and I have heard some of them. When we just recently went to Washington together and on the flight back we all flew back together and talked a lot about job creation. And so they are going to have their own proposals and I'm looking forward to getting that and working with them together and to work on this as swiftly and as quickly as possible.

We can't afford to sit back simply and to wait for the world economy to come back. I've said that also we cannot wait for Washington to create action because who knows if there are any other kind of changes or initiatives, that they will come about announcing. So we want to go and get started here in our state. Our economy will not come back and our revenues will not come back until jobs come back. That the most important thing. As I said, jobs, jobs, jobs.

That brings me, of course, to another main thing that we in Sacramento can do in order to help the economy and to help jobs. I said in my State of the State Address that we can be better partners to the economy. As a matter of fact Bill Lockyer, our treasurer, hit the nail on the head when he said we have to wipe out the deficit. We have to go in there right away, make the mid-year cuts in order to get rid of the deficit as quickly as possible, because that will create again confidence in the financial community, because we've got to sell those bonds.

You know, the people have approved the infrastructure bonds but if you cannot sell those bonds we don't get those billions of dollars. And we need those billions of dollars because again, for each billion dollars that you have in those infrastructure bonds, you create 15,000 to 20,000 new jobs. So I think this is extremely important and I urge the legislators to sit down, not to wait but to get going with the budget and to make those important cuts.

I think that the other thing that is extremely important for us is that we reform our broken budget system and our broken tax system. Over the years those broken systems have led to volatile revenues, runaway spending and monster deficits. They've led to painful tax increases and spending cuts. We've seen last year what happened. Democrats had to make extraordinary sacrifices with the cuts and Republicans had to make extraordinary sacrifices with the tax increases. So it is very, very important that we have a sound budget system where we look at the spikes in revenues and not use them for ongoing programs but we use them for one-time purposes such as infrastructure or paying off the debt or for the rainy day fund. And think about this. If we would have had our budget reforms, our tax reforms in place, our problem would have been $8 to $10 billion less.

Now, another priority that is extremely important and I've talked about that also in my State of the State, is pension reform. No single issue threatens the fiscal health of this state more than our exploding pension obligations. Over the last 10 years our pension costs have gone up by 2,000 percent, from $150 million a year to $3 billion a year. There were certain assumptions made in 1999 of what will happen to our economy and what will happen to our revenues or to the stock market, predicting 28,000 stock market. Well, now we are, since 2009, we are somewhere between 7,000 and 10,500 or so, so the predictions are totally off. That means hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded liabilities and it means that our $3 billion that we are spending now, or funding now, will go up to $10 billion, $12 billion.

This year you will likely see, of course, the legislators talking about tax increases and you will see the special interest groups out there talking about tax increases, even though they don't want to really tackle the budget -- I mean the pension problem. I refuse to punish the people. I think we have done this once before, last year, where we raised the taxes.

And we made it very clear during those negotiations that we will not go back there again. There will be no tax increases. So I want to make it clear that they should work on those various different things where we can get the extra revenues and the extra money, if it is from the private prisons idea or to blowing up the boxes or the pension reform or federal money -- there are billions of dollars in all of those areas but not in tax increases. We have tried this before and so we are not going to go back.

The people, of course, are upset at what's going on in Sacramento and what's going on all over the country. And I know that the legislators are very tired of me talking about budget reform and tax reform and budget reform and pension reform and tax reform. And I will say this mantra over and over again until we get it done, because I think the people are tired of their government's reckless spending, spending money that we don't have. They're tired of being treated like an ATM machine with no withdrawal limits. I think that the state must live within its means, just like we expect the taxpayers to do, ordinary people to do, businesses to do. Everyone has to live within their means.

So that is, I think, something that we have to work on. And I'm looking forward to working with them, with the legislators, on all of those things. I think the sooner we get going to reform in this and the sooner we work on the budget, I think the better it is.

Before closing I just want to make a final point and that is that some pundits across the country have talked about California as a failed state. I don't consider it by any means a failed state. In spite of whatever problems Sacramento may have -- and there are many problems that we have -- California remains still an unparalleled economic engine. We have a $1.9 trillion economy. In fact, over the last 10 years California's economy grew by 25 percent per person and the U.S. average was 16 percent per person and that's quoting the Wall Street Journal. The power of California's innovators and entrepreneurs is still strong. We are still "the shining city on the hill." If Sacramento adopts some of those policies and reforms, some of those things that I have talked about, I think that the sky in the limit.

So with that I want to hand it over to you and have you ask me some question about the things I talked about, or other things that you maybe want to cover. Thank you.

MR. EHISEN:

OK, thank you very much, Governor. (Applause) Now, we have microphones up here and we have Juliet at the back. We're going to kind of be going back and forth. So if you have a question -- the first one will be up here, so if someone wants to wave me down I'll come over. We will start right here with some guy I know. Please identify yourself.

QUESTIONS/ANSWERS

QUESTION: I will. Governor, hi. John Myers, KQED Public Radio. Nice to have you here.

GOVERNOR: Hello.

QUESTION: I want to ask you about one of the budget proposals that I'm not sure -- while it's been in your budget proposals for the last year and a half or so, I'm not sure we've really gotten you to expand on your thinking on it and that's this proposal for new offshore drilling, off northern Santa Barbara County. You know, environmentalists have gone back and looked at some of your quotes over time that said, you know, no drilling off our shores, I'm not in favor of new offshore drilling. And I guess the question is, how do you square that with what you're proposing now, to take this money? And is it really all about the money? I mean, is it really money driven, that you support this plan?

GOVERNOR: I think that it is budget-driven. I think that it is when you are in an emergency, in the fiscal emergency that we're in where we have billions of dollars, you know, that we need in order to fund very important programs such as in-home supportive services, or if it is education K-14 or if it is higher education and vulnerable citizens, I think that you look beyond of just your principles. And I think that this is one of those cases.

As a matter of fact, we make many cuts in this budget that I don't believe that we ought to make but we have a limited amount of resources and we are forced to live within our means. So the budget is not really a reflection of my priorities, when you go program by program. It is much more a reflection of my priority, which is to live within our means. That's all the money we have and therefore you have to go and get a little bit more creative.

Like I said, when we went to Washington to ask for federal money -- when the economy was good and the revenues were coming in we were going to Washington asking for the same things but not with the same intensity as this time. This time we are short of money, so therefore the $6.9 billion that we're supposed to get from the federal government, that we get shortchanged every year, becomes more important. And so this is why I brought the legislative leaders back there to Washington to go and ask for that money and for them to look back into the whole problem that we have of not getting the right, you know, percentages and why we continue supporting other states and so on and so forth.

And it became even more apparent during the health care reform negotiations when they started, you know, going to give a special deal to Nebraska but we're supposed to go and take another hit, $3 to $4 billion. So that's when I said that's enough. We've got to go back there and start pushing back the federal government and ask our congressional delegation to work on that.

So the T-Ridge -- you know, if the oil is there it will be satisfying so many ends. First of all, we get less dependent on foreign oil. Second, we will get extra revenues. The environmentalists are happy, business is happy. Everyone is happy, so why not go ahead with it and do that?

QUESTION: Well, I'm not sure that everyone is happy but I understand your point there. But I just want to ask you, to follow up really quickly, you said, "You have to look beyond your principles." I'm trying to understand what that means, because some people would say what principles really drive you and if you're going to look beyond that principle, why not the other ones like taxes, or things like that?

GOVERNOR: Well, the principle -- well, we have done the taxes and we made it very clear that we won't go back there, because it's very simple that we have so many other areas where we can work on in order to get the extra billions of dollars. As I have explained, for instance with the pension, that cost will go up from the $3 billion now eventually to $10, $12 billion, because we have hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded liability because there were assumptions made that we are going to make that money. But those assumptions were totally wrong, so now the taxpayer is going to get stuck with that bill.

And that's why I say let's reform and let's change the system. We don't want to take anything away from anyone that we have promised something to but let's go and look at it in a creative way so that we can afford giving the state employees their pensions.

And the key thing is the principle of living within our means and not continue spending money that we don't have. That's a promise that I have made in 2003 when I was elected and that's a promise that I want to keep. We don't want to go back again to the people and punish them just for the shortcomings of the legislature and of Sacramento for not fixing those things where there are billions of dollars.

I've also made it clear that in the prison system, if we go, for instance and go and have private prisons come in and compete with the public prisons, that will save us billions of dollars. Why aren't we doing that? Why are we -- this is money that we can give to education and flip the whole thing around. Instead of having education continue taking a hit and the prison spending goes up, let's go and flip it around and go and give more money to higher education and less money to the prisons and to reform and be more cost effective in the prisons.

Now, as you know, today there was someone that is running for attorney general that came out and they said, oh, man, this is terrible, now they are doing prison releases. There is no prison release at all. This is just simply a reform, a parole reform that we have. And this is also working on the recidivism rate, to lower the recidivism rate. And that will save us $500 million. And I like to cut down this 500 million because that is money, again, that can go to education and to higher education. To me that is more a priority. And also it will cut down on the recidivism rate.

So as you can see, the Democrats are out there running for office, for attorney general and they're talking -- immediately they're talking about higher taxes and increasing taxes but they're not even willing to go there and to make those simple reforms that will be safer for the streets and also create great reforms.

QUESTION: Governor, here in the back -- straight ahead.

GOVERNOR: Yes?

QUESTION: I want you to expand, if you would, on this new law that takes effect today. You mentioned about the prison system -- the law that basically requires Corrections to start working on reducing the prison population by focusing on non-violent and low-risk inmates. Could you specifically address the complaints, the criticisms of crime victim groups who believe that this inevitably is going to compromise public safety on the streets?

GOVERNOR: First of all, it's not going to compromise public safety. And second of all, it is simple reforms that is working just strictly on one thing and that is that we have a 70 percent recidivism rate. So every time you have inmates go out they come right back in again, 70 percent of them and that costs our state of California a tremendous amount of money.

What we want to do is cut down on that recidivism rate and also loosen up -- parole agents are now dealing, up until now, dealt with 70 parolees. Now it will be cut down, I think, to around 48 or so. We have Matt Cate in here -- where is Matt? OK, right over there. Do you want to come out here Matt and just talk briefly about that? (Laughter) Because I think that the number is that we cut from 70 to 48 or so of parolees. So that will make the streets safer. Our parole agents can concentrate on those fewer and have much more time to concentrate on those few rather than on all 70.

So it's really actually protecting the people. It creates better public safety and also it cuts down on the amount of money that we are spending on prisons. If you want to elaborate, please? This is Matt Cate, who is, of course, in charge of our prisons here in California.

SECRETARY CATE: The Governor calls me up and --

MR. EHISEN: For the other speaker, though, no extra charge for this. (Laughter)

SECRETARY CATE: It's probably worth it. The Governor calls me up to check his facts and, of course, he's right on. It's exactly 48 to 1. But he's right and this goes back to Governor Deukmejian said five years ago, this is what we need to do to fix the prisons. He's certainly no liberal and he knows public safety. By providing some incentives for inmates to get a GED, learn a trade, become clean and sober, that's how you reduce recidivism and reduce crime. So it's ironic that people are worried about more crimes when these have been shown nationwide to reduce recidivism and reduce crimes.

And the same thing with parole reform. We're now going to have our focus on the serious violent sex offenders where it should have been all these years, instead of having our focus on technical violations by low-level offenders.

So great reforms is a part of this and I think that's why the Governor -- Governor Deukmejian recommended them and this Governor has been fighting for them for the last five years. We just now finally see the day where that's happening.

GOVERNOR: Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

MR. EHISEN: Governor, right here.

GOVERNOR: Yes, please.

QUESTION: Hi, Governor, Marianne Russ, Capitol Public Radio.

GOVERNOR: Hi.

QUESTION: Good to see you. I had a couple of questions about the gubernatorial race. I wondered, first of all, are you planning to endorse a candidate? And second, whoever succeeds you is coming in on top of you having been governor, a very charismatic, very larger-than-life figure. What is your advice to the person who is going to be following you?

GOVERNOR: Well, first of all, I'm not at all thinking about endorsing someone. It is such a long way away, this election. Number two, I think that there is so much work that is ahead of -- you know, that we have to accomplish this year, so I'm focusing really much more on that than on the political side of things. Like I said, the budget reform, the education reforms still needs to be worked on, the tax reforms and to get our initiatives passed and so on. So there's really a lot of work and I want to accomplish those things.

I think that the thing that I will recommend and want to stress for anyone that is following, is to stay focused on what the people want rather than what the special interests want. Because this has been always the battle here in Sacramento. Many, many, conversations that I have with legislators, you always get the same answer; this will be very tough to do because, you know, the third rail is going to be very, very unhappy about this. Or this is going to be very tough to do because, you know, our folks tell us that we shouldn't go there. So this is on both sides, Democrat and Republican sides. And so I think that that really makes it very hard to make the decisions that are right for the people.

Now, may I remind you, I have made my mistakes since I have come into office. But there is one thing that I always keep in mind and that is, is this good for the people or is this good for some special interest group? And I always try to make decisions what is good for the people. And of course you go and have major confrontations then with the special interests and they will fight you. And you have seen them spending money against me and my initiatives. And I tried to reform things in 2005 and, even though the tone maybe was wrong -- but we find out now that if we would have passed those initiatives, like for instance budget reform, or the education reform that now the Obama Administration is talking about so eloquently and now we have finally done -- I think that we would have been much better off.

So I think the key thing is always to keep in mind, listen to the people. Listen to the people. And you have seen now the effect that it had with the Senate race in Massachusetts because that had nothing much to do with that area as much as it had to do with the health care, that the health care went south with the negotiations after it left the House and it went to the Senate. And the deal that they have made -- I myself, who have been a believer in health care reform and was one of the first Republicans out there to endorse it, that yes we should have health reform -- but when I saw that, that all of a sudden they were loading up on states like California $3 billion, $4 billion and doing sweetheart deals for other states and all of this -- I think the people in the United States -- not just in Massachusetts, in the United States -- have gotten very angry about that and wanted to send a message to the administration. And that's what the message was.

So we have to be careful. Listen to the people. That's the most important thing.

Yes? Oh, yes.

QUESTION: Governor, Hank Plante from CBS-5 TV in San Francisco. Governor, a majority of Californians now think that the state is in worse shape than when you began your terms in office. What's your reaction to that?

GOVERNOR: Well, I've read some of those things, that 27 percent approval rating -- which is much better. I'm very encouraged about that, because when I go home I have only a 20 percent approval rating. (Laughter)

But look, all jokes aside, I think the people have a right to be angry. I don't blame them. When you see every day that things are not changing much, people are frustrated because they lose jobs, they lose money, they lose their businesses, families are falling apart because of that -- there's a lot of pain out there. And I know that, because when I walk around people come up to me and let me know the kind of suffering that goes on. I read the letters that are coming in, I get the phone calls, so I know exactly what's going on.

And so the people are frustrated that things are not changing quickly enough. And this is why it is so important that, when you are in my position, or whatever public servant you are, that this is the time when you really have to kick in and go in overdrive and work day and night to work for the people and to make sure that you bring jobs back as quickly as possible, that you turn the economy around as quickly as possible and that you listen to the people. That's the important thing.

So it's time for us to really work hard and for Democrats and Republicans to get together and get the job done.

Yes?

MR. EHISEN: Go ahead, stay in the back. That's fine.

QUESTION: Nannette Miranda with KABC-TV in Los Angeles. Given how slow things work at the Capitol and given that you had a court ruling that said you could do it last year, do you think it's a possibility that you would order pay cuts for state workers to the minimum wage if the budget is late?

GOVERNOR: Well, as you know, we are negotiating with labor and we will do everything that we can with those furlough days. As you could see, there are court cases that we win and there are some every so often that we lose. That's the way it goes. But the bottom line is that we have the authority to call for the furlough days and to live within our means and to make certain cuts.

And we are not asking -- I think the key thing also here is this is not like I have read that we are going after labor. We are not at all going after labor. It's just that when you want to make cuts if affects so many times people that are part of labor. So that's what happens. So if you talk about in-home supportive services, if you talk about education reform, if you talk about pension reform, if you do furloughs, if you do, you know, making cuts, salary cuts, which we proposed in our budget -- then all of this will affect the workers that are part of labor.

But it's not us being against labor. We very much appreciate what the state workers do. But in the private sector there are certain kind of changes that had to be made within companies. We have just heard today Wal-Mart is laying off 11,000 or some people because of the limited activities, economic activities.

So everyone has to look at the situation and just make changes. And that's all we are trying to do, is try to live within our means. When you have a year like last year, where we all of a sudden had a $60 billion hole and then the following year, this year, $20 billion hole, you've got to somehow fill those things. You've got to go and deal with this reality.

So what we are doing is just trying to live within our means. And we hope and ask the state workers to be with us on that and to let them know we appreciate their work but we all have to cut back and make certain sacrifices.

QUESTION: Governor?

QUESTION: (Inaudible) wage options?

GOVERNOR: We are looking at all -- we are right now, like I said, we are starting to negotiate with them. So all of those things are options. But you know, what we have proposed in the budget is what we are trying to do.

MR. EHISEN: Governor, over here, actually.

GOVERNOR: Yes?

QUESTION: Presidential prerogative here. I mentioned the water reform deal. You have a lot riding on that and we have an $11 billion bond issue that's out there at a time when we have this terrible budget deficit. What are you going to be doing to try to get that bond passed? What happens if it doesn't pass? What impact, if that happens, does that have on your legacy from you time as governor?

GOVERNOR: Again, even though Speaker Bass talks so many times about my legacy, I'm not at this point that concerned about that as I am concerned about getting the economy back and getting jobs back and fixing some of the things that need to be fixed in this state. I feel that I have been very fortunate, that many things that I've promised we did get to fix, if it is the Worker's Compensation reform, which has saved the state more than $50 billion since I've come into office, of if it is rebuilding California, all the infrastructure bonds, if it is rebuilding our roads and transportation system, or our schools, affordable housing or our levees and so on, or our prisons -- you know, the $8 billion to finally build facilities for 53,000 new beds, of the water infrastructure bonds that still need to be approved. But there are a lot of things.

And also environmental issues, because I always was determined that we have to fight for economic growth but also to protect the environment, to pass AB 32, to build the hydrogen highway, the Green Building Initiative, the Low-Carbon Fuel Standards, Tailpipe Emission Standards, all of this kind of thing.

Great, great things were done. But there are still specific things that were not done and that I could not get done. And this year is the year where I have to do them, which is the tax reform and to do the budget reform. Because if we have those two things in place I think the state can move forward in a very, very strong way and will never have those kind of up and down swings where we take programs on a roller-coaster ride.

So right now I'm not thinking so much about the bonds, the water bonds that are in November. Right now we have to get jobs back. That's what I'm thinking of; jobs, jobs, jobs. And I'm totally tunnel-visioned and focused on that and I can't wait to get together with our legislators and legislative leaders to come up and see their ideas, bring all of those ideas together and go aggressively out there and really push so we can bring people back to work.

QUESTION: Hi, Governor. Back here. Judy Lin with the Associated Press. I will stand out so you can see. You're wrapping up your tenure and this is probably the last time you'll be addressing this crowd. I wonder if you could share with us some of your mindset of whether or not you've had your fill of politics and what you see in the future, if you see yourself still in public service?

GOVERNOR: Well, first of all, it's just a little bit too early to reflect, because I still have a whole year of hard work ahead of me. But when I'm finished with that, then I hope that you'll invite me back, even though I'm not governor, next year. And then I can reflect and do a little reflection here for a half an hour or something like that.

As a matter of fact, I wanted to -- I told my scheduling people that I wanted to invite all of you anyway for lunch, because -- (Laughter) Because A, because you're all working hard and I know that some of you work sometimes late at night and you are taken away from your families and it's a tough job, just like, you know, other people working sometimes late at night and so on and are taken away from their families.

So I just want to take this opportunity and thank all of you for the terrific job and for the hard work that all of you are doing. And I wanted to invite all of you for lunch but I'm not going to include the legislators this time. (Laughter) They are not going to get in, I promise you. I had it. (Laughter) So this will just be us, so this number one.

Number two, when you talk about what I'm going to do after this, there are many things that people suggest, you can imagine now. You know, some of them think that I should be an entrepreneur and invest money and do business. Others think I should go back into show business. Others even often say that it is best to actually have a 10 o'clock program on NBC, (Laughter) and then get fired. That will be the big kill. (Laughter) So there are all kinds of suggestions like that. Like I said, I'm not at all thinking about that time. I'm thinking just about the work that I'm doing now. This is the most important thing.

And I can tell you, as tough as it is but it is such an honor and it is such a great feeling, such a satisfying feeling, to work every day on behalf of the people, because my whole life long, in bodybuilding and in acting or whatever else -- businesses that I did -- it was more about me. This is not about me. This is about the state of California. And when you're an immigrant and you come over here and you know that everything that you have accomplished is because of California, then to give something back, it's great. It feels good. Even though it's a tough time now to be a leader, very tough but it is such an honor for me to be able to do that and to have this job and to serve the people of California.

So I wouldn't change it for anything, no matter what. So I'm not looking forward to it being over; I'm looking forward to working for the people this year very hard and make sure that some of the promises that I have made, that I can keep those promises. And I will do everything I can to work with Democrats and Republicans together because the action really is when you bring both of the parties together.

MR. EHISEN: Let's come back up here somewhere. I've been on this side of the room. Pardon me, Governor. Anybody over here have a question? Somebody like Dave Lesher?

MS. WILLIAMS: While they think about it, we have one back here.

MR. EHISEN: Actually, here. Bear with me.

QUESTION: Since nobody else wants to. I'm A.G. Block with the University of California. And Governor, I was sitting here admiring your ring. It's been smiling at me throughout the entire -- your presentation.

GOVERNOR: That's why I put it on. (Laughter)

QUESTION: Hopefully somebody got a close-up.

GOVERNOR: What do you have in mind? (Laughter) All right, I got it.

QUESTION: Governor, you mentioned in your remarks that one of the things you wanted to try and get rid of is the reckless spending. Could you give us a couple of examples of reckless spending, what you consider to be reckless spending, that might produce the kind of savings you would hope to help close this gap?

GOVERNOR: Well, one of them is, I mentioned several times, which is the prisons. I think that there is no reason why we should have just state employees and the public prisons. Why shouldn't we have private prisons and private prisons compete with the public prisons? I don't want to go and get rid of the public prisons, not at all. It's not an attack on their labor union, even though they may take it as such.

But I think that we can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take inmates, for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here and get them to Mexico. Think about it. California give Mexico the money. Not that, hey, you take care of them, these are your citizens. No, not at all. We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison and with their prison guards and all this. It will halve the costs to build the prisons and halve the costs to run the prisons. That is money -- again, a billion dollars right there -- that can go into higher education. That's just one example of the things that we do that is just unnecessary spending.

If it is in energy, I have talked about since I came into office, to have only one department of energy. There are all those agencies and departments, 12 of them, that are kind of stepping over each other's feet and you can't get anything done. To get permits it takes an endless amount of time, which is holding us back, which is holding our economy back, holding jobs back. If we have it all under one roof and there's a secretary responsible to the governor, we can get much quicker everything done and we would save money also.

Blowing up certain boxes that we don't need. I mean, there are many, many things like that that we can do. Or, for instance, the unnecessary spending with the pensions. Why not, when we know now that we cannot afford the pensions that were promised in 1999 with certain assumptions, why would we continue on in that track and spend billions and billions. Like I said, this will skyrocket; 2,000 percent our spending went up the last 10 years on pensions. We want to give the state employees a fair pension. But what was calculated, what was promised, didn't make any sense because it was on assumptions that our economy keeps going up like that and it doesn't. What goes up must come down. That's just the old rule.

So I'm just saying let's look at all of those things and let's go, before we ever talk about taxes or revenues -- there are the revenues, there are the billions of dollars of solutions. But it's very hard to do those things because if you're answering to the special interests -- and you know, it's like Treasurer Lockyer said. It will be very hard for the legislature to reform the pension system because people, the very same people elected them and put them into office. And so I believe that's why it is very hard. But in the end we still have to make those decisions and we have to do what is right for the people and not to foot the people of California with the bill and to raise their taxes because we need those revenues now to pay for those kind of things. So that's what I'm saying.

Last year we raised the taxes because the Democrats were able to make certain concessions, powerful concessions, to make the kind of cuts they didn't believe in at all. But they did. And so therefore I said if they are willing to do something like that, to go against what they believe in just because we are in an economic or financial crunch, then we should do the same thing as Republicans and go and say OK, let's go and raise taxes, even though we hate raising taxes, don't believe it in at all. But that's how you meet in the middle. So we both took those risks and, of course, Republicans, some of them, lost their careers because of it. So we know that. And it was also tough on the Democrats.

But we can't go back again this year and say OK, by the way, we didn't raise enough taxes. Let's raise it again. No. I think we should look at those billions of dollars that I've just talked about and reform some of those systems and then we have enough of the money to squeak by until the economy comes back.

QUESTION: Governor, in the back.

GOVERNOR: Yeah?

QUESTION: Kevin Yamamura with the Sacramento Bee. Governor, you've set fundraising records as a California governor and I just wanted to ask, what is your opinion on the Supreme Court decision of last week? Do you believe there ought to be limits for corporations and unions to give in federal election?

GOVERNOR: I think that it made the playing field more fair, because now -- because we all know that labor can spend endless amount of money on campaigns and so can businesses now. So I think it just, you know, evens it out a little bit better. Does it change much? I don't think much will be changed. But I think it was a fair decision.

MR. EHISEN: Governor, over here. We have time for one more.

GOVERNOR: Yes?

QUESTION: Bob Schmidt from the Campus Comments Newsletter. (Laughter) The California Constitution is five times longer than the federal Constitution. Is it fixable, or does California need a new Constitution?

GOVERNOR: I think that -- you know, I have asked the legislature and they have said many times that before we go directly to the people with a constitutional convention that we should go and give them a chance, that they can fix it. And I said immediately, I said, I think that's terrific. I think we should give them the first shot, so it doesn't look like we go directly to the people without giving them a shot. So I have proposed a certain amount of changes and reforms and let's see. Speaker Bass herself said that I'm going to come up, she herself is going to come up with certain changes that will be very important, that makes it easier to manage the state.

So if the legislature is able to do that, we will see. I mean, time will tell. I hope they can do it so we don't have to drag this whole thing out for two years and go to the ballot with this whole thing. But if they can't do it, then I think they should go to the ballot and that they should go directly to the people and we should have then a constitutional convention. But first let's give the legislators a shot and let's see if they can do it. I mean, we have some smart people over there. And so the question is just more about the will, does the will exist to make those kind of changes that we need.

MR. EHISEN: Great, Governor. Thank you very much.

GOVERNOR: Thank you very much. Thank you."



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