Bush's America
Public Services at Risk as US States Face Financial Crisis

The street lights may still be twinkling on Sunset Boulevard and the sun may still come up every morning over the Mojave desert, but California could soon be plunged into fiscal darkness.

The state with an economy the equivalent of the world's fifth largest nation is bust, and a crisis which could lead to mass lay-offs and collapse of the public education system is in the offing.
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This must be Bush's idea of compasionate concervatism.

Most states faced a crisis on budget
California not alone in confronting crisis

California's budget may be the biggest and messiest fiscal imbroglio of all 50 states, but it's far from the only one.

All manner of ugly gimmicks, tax increases and spending cuts have been used by dozens of other states, whether ruled by Republicans or Democrats, to close budget deficits brought on chiefly by a sharp downturn in tax revenue as the economic boom ended.

State after state has seen political deadlocks and last-minute budget deals. The fights have been so intense that in some places they have pitted members of the same party against each other, transcending the party battle that has gridlocked California.
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