Senator Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel) issued the following statement after the Senate tonight approved a “nearly final” budget agreement between Governor Newsom and legislative Democrats:

“The Governor and legislative Democrats have wasted a golden opportunity to ensure California can pay for essential services during a future economic downturn. Instead, they have created a spending path that will lead to operating deficits by 2022-23. This will inevitably lead to either tax increases, budget cuts, or both.

“While the budget does contain some items most Californians can support, such as more funding to process unemployment insurance claims and a significant amount of funding to expand broadband internet service, the budget does not pay down the state's unemployment insurance debt. This debt is essentially a jobs tax at a time when many businesses are still struggling to emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown. The budget also contains far too many new spending commitments that will be unaffordable in the long-run.

“Unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of good public policy. The spending spree of today will lead to some very hard decisions tomorrow that will leave many Californians further disillusioned with their state government.”