See? It's easy to budget and put California in the black

Publication Date
Author
Jack Robinson
Source
Sacramento Business Journal

Don't mean to brag, but I put California $9.9 billion in the black yesterday. No need for a medal or anything — happy to help.

In truth, I did this just on paper — or, rather, online. This week, a nonpartisan group launches an interactive budget simulator that lets anyone make choices to balance the state's income and expenditures.

It's a useful exercise if only to educate state residents about the complexities of the task. Each of more than a dozen budget categories offers a wide range of choices that can save or cost billions of dollars. And you know that those choices are only a subset of options that real budget-writers are considering.

Other organizations have put up similar exercises, but this simulator is unusually detailed. It offers six options for handling California' "wall of debt" (Jerry Brown's memorable phrase from last year), for example, ranging from an expense of nothing to $3.2 billion.

The simulator is produced by Next 10, a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic development research organization funded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist F. Noel Perry. No doubt the group will use data collected from the exercise to gain a sense of what people want in the next state budget. Or, at least, what people who take the time to complete online budget simulators want.

By the way, you may wonder: How did I arrange cuts and revenue enhancements to produce a $9.9 billion budget surplus? Too bad — I'm not talking. But you might be able to do the same.

Try your hand at the budget challenge.

And afterward, see if you can balance the federal budget too.

Let us know what you come up with, and how.