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Proposal Details

Proposal ID94
ProposalPlatform Amendment: Budget
PresenterPlatform Committee
Floor ManagerMike Feinstein
PhaseClosed
Discussion05/10/2016 - 06/26/2016
Voting06/27/2016 - 07/03/2016
ResultAdopted
Presens Quorum12 0.5001
Consens Quorum54 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

This proposal would allow for amending the Budget plank in the GPCA Platform http://www.cagreens.org/platform/budget .

There are no specific amendments proposed yet. Rather the Platform Committee is aware of interest in proposing amendments from at least one county Green Party and has agreed to place this proposal before the Standing General Assembly to receive and consider amendments from SGA members.

Additionally both Platform Committee members - Peggy Koteen and Shane Que Hee - are SGA delegates and can participate in SGA debate.

Proposal

That the existing Budget platform plank be amended as follows:

Greens believe the first priority in budgeting at all levels of government should be investing in the general welfare of the people of California and the state's natural environment. In particular Greens support generous funding for health, education, public transportation and environmental protection, which are all great social equalizers and provide a floor of social justice for all Californians. Greens also favor education over incarceration, and believe budget priorities should reflect this.

Such strategic social investments are not only just, but help reduce greater future costs, by minimizing or eliminating problems before they occur. 

For example, investing in education instead of incarceration will lead to more productive lives and less crime and social problems; investing in renewable energy and sustainable development will help reduce future costs related to adapting to climate change; and investing in nutrition and a statewide universal single-payer health care system will promote public health and reduce health care costs.

To ensure sufficient funding for our needs, Greens support a fair taxation approach of more progressive taxation on income while closing tax loopholes and eliminating corporate welfare; ecological taxes on economic practices that ensure that the real costs of goods and services are borne by those who purchase and use them, and are not displaced upon society as a whole; and a land value tax that captures the socially-created wealth of land for society, while simultaneously rewarding individual investment and initiative of property owners.  (http://www.cagreens.org/platform/fair-taxation)

Greens also believe that many public infrastructure projects should be funded via the establishment of a publicly-owned California state bank which would substantially lower borrowing costs and hence make such projects less expensive by lowering interest rates, and keep more of the public's money in the state instead of going to Wall Street.

Proposal: The Green Party supports

- Prioritizing investment  in the general welfare of the people of California and the state's natural environment, with a priority on support for health, education, public transportation and environmental protection

- Funding education over incarceration

- Creating a publicly-owned, California state bank to help finance public infrastructure projects

Resources

None

References

The existing text of the Budget platform plank:

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

We must insist on measuring the long and short-term benefits of government spending after the fact. Too often benefits are promised that never materialize but the spending continues.

We need a thorough analysis of the California State Budget from a perspective which emphasizes results for the people of the state. California, like other states and the federal government, struggles to avoid budget deficits. The great bulk of expenditures in this state are for education and welfare. While Greens advocate adequate funding for these areas, we question whether this is being accomplished effectively.

We must examine the results that are achieved by the centralized bureaucracies that manage our welfare and education systems. Are these bureaucracies responding to the needs of the people in the state? It would seem not.

It is time to decentralize the national banks to defuse the Wall Street casino and the funding of huge, centralized projects, by the development of community banks as well as state banks. Community banks would enable depositors to have a voice in policy, because there could be more money in the new system than in the non-military portion of the federal budget. This would create a real alternative strong enough to displace the current big-bank system by attracting consumers and small and medium businesses to support one other financially. It could help solve the unemployment problem by allowing all these new businesses to start -- most of them being labor-intensive. Mutual financial support will also lead to mutual political support, which can take advantage of (and redirect) social media to enable two or three hundred million people in the USA, and billions of people globally, to collaborate and coordinate (using supply chain and project management, or enterprise resource planning system, software) to foster economic, social and political paradigm shifts.

Increasing expenditures for prisons are also a concern.

PROPOSAL

The Green Party calls for effective government spending:

Conduct cost-effectiveness studies of the major departments in state, county and local government.

It should be part of the responsibility of state government to communicate how it is spending the public's money in ways that are accessible to the public and to county and local governments.

Make strategic social investments to avoid much greater future costs. For example, investing in public renewable energy, quality education, sustainable urban and rural planning, infrastructure planning related to climate change, protection of the environment, and social programs. Providing effective family planning services will avoid later costs associated with neglected children; a state universal health care single-payer system will keep all healthy; a state-based pension plan for all.

Create a state bank to retain wealth within California and to reduce Wall Street control.

Create community banks to decentralize the banking system within the state. Stop the enormous expansion of the prison industry, which is a disproportionately large item in the state budget.




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