In the Recall Candidates' Words

The Budget

Some of the liveliest exchanges during Wednesday's recall debate occurred in response to a question about balancing the state budget. McClintock began by proposing spending cuts:

Tom McClintock: This state is already spending a larger portion of people's earnings than at any time in its history ....

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Peter Camejo: Tom wants to cut, cut, cut. I want to put more money into education.... All they want to do is cut, cut, and rip, rip, over here to my right.... They were cutting the taxes on the wealthiest people while they raised your taxes. I want to reverse that.

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Arianna Huffington: The first thing I would do is close corporate tax loopholes.... What I find amazing is that Republicans really do not believe that morality applies to businesses. You know, it should be absolutely unacceptable that companies defraud the California public and then the state continues to do business with them. Is that the kind of business climate you'd like to bring to the state? The same kind of business climate that brought us Enron and Global Crossing and Adelphia and has cost millions of jobs ... ? And one more thing, Arnold ....

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Arnold Schwarzenegger: Arnold? I like that. I'll tell you one thing. You personally, personal income tax, have the biggest loophole. I can drive my Hummer through it.

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Huffington: You know perfectly well I paid $150,000 in property taxes and payroll taxes. And you know what? I'm a writer, and these two years was writing and researching a book, and I wasn't making $20-million violent movies, I'm sorry.

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Cruz Bustamante: Clearly, we spent too much. As a government, we spent more than was coming in. There's no rocket science to this. We clearly knew that there were certain incomes that were coming in, and we spent more than we had.... We've done all the easy things, and now it's time to do the tough things. I have a plan, a plan that I call tough love for California....

"We do something in terms of raising taxes. She [Huffington] called it raising revenues. We know what it really is. But at the same time, we get something good for Californians.

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Huffington: There's tough love for everybody except for Indian gaming tribes and prison guard unions. And that's really the problem with our system. Tough love for everybody except your big campaign contributors.

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Schwarzenegger: The politicians make a mistake. They keep spending and spending and spending....