SACRAMENTO — Calling California's social service benefits to the poor too charitable given the state's fiscal problems, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday proposed cutting welfare benefits by 6.5%, capping dental benefits for the poor at $1,000 a year and requiring many impoverished disabled people for the first time to pay up to $27 a month in premiums for their healthcare.
Many of Schwarzenegger's suggested healthcare and human services reductions, which are designed to save $1.2 billion, were similar to ones that the Democratic-led Legislature opposed last year. In some areas, such as welfare, his new cuts would be even deeper.
Despite the reductions, the governor came up with a third of the $400 million a year in savings his administration pledged last year that it would find in the state's healthcare programs for the poor.
Schwarzenegger also offered modest efforts to expand California's health insurance coverage for low-income children, which he had proposed to cut last year, and launched a new program to combat obesity.
Although Democrats and advocates for the poor said the cuts were not as drastic as they had expected, they still said it was wrong to require California's poorest to pay more money while protecting affluent Californians from any tax increases.
"I'm happy to talk about reforming the system, but I can't imagine that any of us can support balancing the budget by imposing further hardships on people of modest means," said Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), chairman of the Senate Human Services Committee.
"We've made tremendous progress moving people from welfare to work," he said, "and now comes the governor telling us that in the toughest of times financially, people of modest means are supposed to make a further sacrifice."
Schwarzenegger justified the cuts by noting that even with the reductions, California's grant levels would be the second highest of the 10 most populous states, exceeded only by New York's.
"We have to live within our means," he told reporters. "We can't pick and choose and say, 'Well, we don't like those people and so we should take the money out.' It's just that's all the money we have."
Schwarzenegger's most severe social service reductions concerned CalWORKS, the state's welfare program. For a family of three in Los Angeles, his proposed 6.5% cut in benefits would translate to a $47 reduction in the monthly welfare grant, which is $723.
