The late C. Wright Mills had a certain segment of America's Cold War foreign policy establishment in mind when he coined the description "crackpot realism."
He might just as well have had in mind the outlooks of those performing the seemingly endless buffoonery masquerading as deliberations over the state budget in Sacramento. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insists that the only way to close the estimated $24-billion budget gap is to throw children in need of health insurance, the ill, the elderly and tens of thousands of the working poor -- many of them single mothers -- to the wolves of self-reliance. The Democrats, naturally, resist, but offer no workable alternative plan to close the deficit. The Republicans stand apart, like some secular Taliban, and chant "no new taxes" -- ever, for any reason.
Last week, the state's Catholic bishops bravely walked into this lion's den of intransigent "realism" and offered their view of what's actually at stake in this tragedy that's being played as farce. It's crucial, they said, that lawmakers not only "undertake major tax and budget reforms" but also that they "give top priority to programs that provide for the basic needs of children, the disabled and those poor and unemployed who cannot provide for themselves." These people, the bishops said, need to be provided for "before funding less urgently needed services."
Noting that the groups they singled out already have been the hardest hit by the state's worst budget crisis since the Depression, the bishops wrote: "We don't presume to have all the answers when it comes to solving our state's serious budget problems. However ... as they go about their deliberations, we believe it is critical that lawmakers are guided by two fundamental principles."
First, they said, budget cuts should not start with the "wholesale elimination" of programs that address the basic survival needs of the poor and vulnerable. And second, budget and tax reform should be "addressed now, not later."
"A permanent fix needs to be enacted so that everyone who relies on state government, especially the poor and vulnerable, won't be in a constant state of upheaval, worried they will be cut off from the basic necessities of food, shelter and medical care," the bishops wrote.
