SACRAMENTO, CA – As state officials met to consider whether federal stimulus dollars would avoid triggering massive state budget cuts, hundreds of SEIU members, senior citizens, students, faculty, doctors and people with disabilities converged in Sacramento today in an effort to stop the so-called “trigger” cuts.  Marching on the Capitol, ralliers demanded that state leaders use federal recovery dollars to “STIMULATE” the economy by protecting jobs and programs, and not further “DEVASTATE” Californians with deeper cuts on top severe reductions in critical services made over the last several years.

"The President and Congress passed the Recovery bill to stimulate our economy by saving and creating jobs and protecting vital services for kids, the elderly, and people with disabilities,” said Bill Powers, Vice President of the California Alliance for Retired Americans.  “As the President and Congress recognize, making deep cuts to vital public services that our families, seniors, and communities rely on is exactly the wrong thing to do.  We call on the Governor, the Treasurer, and the Legislature to ensure that the federal economic stimulus funds are accounted for in a way that fulfills their purpose and saves vital public services that so many Californians rely on.”

The state budget agreement passed in February counted on $10 billion in federal aid for critical programs including Medi-Cal, SSI/SSP, and In Home Supportive Services through June 30, 2010.  The Governor also vetoed more than $100 million in funding for the University of California and California State University, with the understanding that federal stimulus dollars would backfill higher education cuts.  The California Budget Project, a non-partisan budget research organization, estimated that California will receive a total of more than $50 billion in federal stimulus dollars, and with special grants and funds could help provide $10 billion required in specified areas to avoid triggering more cuts in programs for the most vulnerable.

“After consecutive years of deep cuts to health care and assistance that we rely on to survive, thousands of our seniors and people with disabilities are barely hanging on, if they are hanging on at all,” said Herb Meyer, an IHSS Consumer. “Reducing wages for caregivers will result in more disruptive turnover that threatens the quality of our care.  Additional cuts could be the final straw that forces the poorest and frailest Californians out of their homes or even costs them their lives.”

If enacted, further cuts would destabilize home care for thousands of vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities, take away critical, often life-saving healthcare from 3 million Californians, slash our system of higher education even more, and take away from the meager financial support California provides to low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities. 

“Cutting home care wages and jobs is exactly the wrong thing to do at a time when we need to stimulate our economy,” said Caroline McKinnon, Homecare Worker from Marin County. “Like all working people in California, home care workers are struggling to keep roofs over our families’ heads and health care for our kids.  Forcing us out of our jobs will make things worse for the people we care about,     and the economy we all want to see improve.”

“It is impossible to believe that the men and women who voted for the federal stimulus package intended for California’s leadership to turn around and use it as an excuse to cut programs for some of the state’s most vulnerable,” said Lillian Taiz, Professor at CSU Los Angeles and President of the California Faculty Association.  “The goal of the package is to improve conditions not make them worse.”

“We as a state must decide what we want our future to hold. We must not abandon those students who have worked to achieve their dreams only to be told that their dreams are no longer appreciated or important enough to state policymakers,” said Kellie Trauner, a Sociology major at CSU East Bay.

Carla Kakutani, MD, from the California Academy of Family Physicians, added, “We want our legislators to take ownership and responsibility for the damage these cuts will cause. This is not an issue of what the federal government does or doesn’t do. This is an issue of what the government of California does.”