I Need Your Boots, Your Clothes, Your Motorcycle And Eight Billion Dollars

Via Atrios, Ahnold says he needs $8 billion in stimulus cash from the Feds or he's going all Terminator on the state's social programs.

Facing a budget deficit of more than $20 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to call for deep reductions in already suffering local mass transit programs, renew his push to expand oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast and appeal to Washington for billions of dollars in federal help, according to state officials and lobbyists familiar with the plan.

If Washington does not provide roughly $8 billion in new aid for the state, the governor threatens to severely cut back -- if not eliminate -- CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations recently approved by the Legislature, the officials said.

Schwarzenegger also will propose extending a cut in the state payroll that is scheduled to expire this summer. That cut has translated into 200,000 state workers being furloughed three days a month, the equivalent of a 14% pay cut. Lawmakers would have the option of extending the furloughs, imposing layoffs or some combination of the two.

The governor is scheduled to unveil his plan publicly early next month. Administration spokesman Matt David declined to comment on the details.

That's because the details apparently involve Ahnold extorting $8 billion out of Obama in a state where it is quite literally impossible to ever raise taxes to pay for things that are broken.  And remember, it's the goal of Republicans to functionally destroy government so that it can never work, and make the people hate it for all time...thus paving the way for the private sector to profit off public utilities.

Funny how that works, eh?  Starve government until it can't work, then blame it for the shortcomings designed into the system.  Currently 1/7th of America lives under that system.  The other 6/7ths of us are due if the GOP has its way.