Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Riverside yesterday.  You can see the video here.  He was introduced by Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione who promised the Governor would tell us, "a little bit about the extremely difficult budget crisis that the state has in place right now and how he intends to fix it."

Borrowing and tax increases are the answer I heard, but first the Governor went through his history as a champion to reduce spending.  Arnold talked about trying to get spending limits through the legislature and through the ballot initiative process.  Then he professed his love for Riverside and renewed his call for a "rainy day" fund to help stabilize the budget.

"...the reason why I'm here in Riverside, besides that I love Riverside is because Riverside has a system in place that we should have as a state, which is that when you have a problem economically you have a rainy day fund set aside. Now, you have $34 million set aside that if you run out of money, or if the revenues are not coming in the way they should, that you have some money there on the side that you can then supplement the shortfall in revenues. Well, we as a state don't have that, interestingly enough and have been fighting over that with the legislators in Sacramento year, after year, after year..."

And if this is all the Governor had to say on the budget, I'd be content.  In fact, the overall tone of the speech was anti-tax and a strong push for a stable budget that had a reserve fund, but every so often the Governor would leave a crack in his no-taxes rhetoric.  And in the past the Governor has always taken advantage of those cracks at budget time.

Yesterday he said stuff like:

"...So we're not only going to make cuts, we're going to make certain adjustments..." 

"...Now, when it comes to raising taxes, there is the big debate. I always say everything is on the table, because I'm never going to go and say no, no, don't put this on the table. I think everything should be on the table and then we negotiate..."

"...Governor Pete Wilson was struggling with that, that one year he had the revenues, the next year there were no revenues and he had to raise taxes..."

"...Now, of course, we have to go and take the lottery. And I think the lottery is a great idea because we don't have to raise taxes, we just take the future earnings of that lottery that is underperforming now. Everyone knows that it is underperforming. So why not take something that the people have already voted for and have said, 'yes, we think we should have the lottery,' why not take that money, future earnings and use it now? So this is our idea of that whole thing."

Again, the Governor's overall tone was anti-tax and he had some great points about water, infrastructure, the economy and public pensions, but I'm afraid he won't heed his own advice below:

"...We've got to go and start becoming responsible and only spend what we really know we have rather than promising the world and just hoping eventually down the line we can go and sell bonds and then we can go and raise taxes and all of those things. Let's live within our means."