All The Leaves Are Brown...

...in California? Figuratively, at least:

Bloomberg: Senate President Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, plans to lock lawmakers in the capitol unless they pass a $40 billion package of tax increases, spending cuts and bond sales today. The bills, backed by the Republican governor and by Democrats, remain one Republican vote short.

“We are dealing with a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions,” said Senator Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from Long Beach. “We cannot deny it any longer.”

California, a state that would rank as the world’s eighth largest economy, is close to running out of cash because its tax collections have fallen amid the U.S. recession. It has already stopped paying income tax refunds and next month may be forced to pay bills with IOUs for the second time since the Great Depression unless a new budget is agreed.

The budget proposal would raise the state sales-tax rate to 8.25 percent from 7.25 percent; boost vehicle license fees to 1.15 percent from 0.65 percent of the value of an automobile; add 12 cents to the per-gallon gasoline tax; reduce the dependant-care tax credit to $100 from $300 and impose a surcharge on income taxes of up to 5 percent.

Democrats screaming to raise taxes? Nothing new. But screaming to cut spending, too? Things must be pretty serious. Still, it's the tax hike that the Democrats are really after. Only they could be sage enough to say, "Consumer spending is down? Damnit! We'd better make things more expensive."

I don't know about you, but short of winning the lottery, spending cuts seems to be the only way to get your financial life back on track fast.

This morning I looked at my phone bill and was stunned. My old phone plan just wasn't cutting it. In the space of two months, my bill doubled because business was better and I was receiving more phone calls and emails. My phone bill was now higher than my car insurance. Something about that didn't sound right, so I called the phone company. The guy on the other end said, "Yeah, you're spending a lot more money. More phone calls, more emails. You're exceeding your plan."

There's two ways I could have looked at that. I could have said, "No big deal. I'll charge my clients a bit more, say, an extra five dollars an hour. Shouldn't hurt them too badly." Or I could have said, "I need to get this spending down."

I went with the latter and the guy gave me a new plan. Win some, lose some: I get unlimited email and incoming calls, but it shortens me up on my outgoing minutes. Problem? Perhaps, unless I remind myself to reach across the desk and use the land line for every outgoing call while I'm in the house, and don't make any calls outside the house when a text will do the trick.

I don't think the economy is so difficult. Hand the budget to three single working moms, a bait shop owner, a trucker, plus an accountant to help with the software, and I bet they'll have the budget balanced in no time. You may not like their results, but they'll get you off the schneid. They couldn't possibly do a worse job than the politicians and economists are doing now.

William F. Buckley had some kind of line that said, "I'd rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard."

Quite, though I wouldn't pick Boston. Never liked the Red Sox.