The California Budget Crisis and Words: Don't Like "Tax Increase"? Okay - Call It a "Budget Surge"

Other terms like "budget neutral" or "cost neutrality" make it sound as if budget discussions had something to do with international relations, like Switzerland being neutral during World War II.

Other word combinations mask or hide some bad outcomes.

Proposals that advance "quality assurance" or require "quarterly status reports" or impose "family cost participation" or "purchase of services standards" or "fraud and abuse" make it sound as if policymakers really mean to get at problems and make things better.

Virtually all those word combinations have something in common: controlling the numbers of people who are eligible for services which means cutting or capping caseload. and controlling the number of hours or cost of using services which means cutting or reducing utilization. Both those things reduce costs to the State, but of course also mean cutting services for people who need them and impacting their rights to live in their own communities.

Words Have Meaning and Consequences

Words - even if masked or combined with other words, do have meaning and consequences.

A policymaker doesn't use bad sounding words when promoting proposals that could harm a person - cutting Medi-Cal rates for instance. Policymakers who advocate for a proposal like that don't say that it will mean that people will lose healthcare, that a person with disabilities - a child or a senior - will die. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that saying that doesn't help get support for the proposal.

When we, as advocates use words that describe proposals as "devastating" or "harmful" or that it will mean people will be harmed or die, some policymakers - especially those who favor those proposals, will say our words hide the real meaning - or that our words or too extreme or exaggerated. Sometimes they have a point. This time they don't.

On the other hand, at least the effort by policymakers to mask some really bad proposals with more pleasant sounding words is a recognition - perverse as it may be in some respects - that using the actual real words, like "cutting critical services" is a bad thing or would offend the sensibilities of most people.

Nationally the same language is often used and for the same reasons. "Deficit Reduction Act" for instance was used to mask massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

Most recently and perhaps the most creative example of using different words to describe something that many people would have opposed is the increase in troop levels last year in Iraq. No matter what one's position on the war is, by any definition it was a troop increase, it was an escalation. But it was called a "troop surge".

It is hard to argue about a proposal where the word used to describe it is one that no one quite understands.

Putting All Options on the Proverbial Table

On the other hand, in California, it is mystifying how some policymakers can say everything needs to be considered in terms of cuts, but flatly refuse any consideration of increasing revenues as part of the solutions to address an enormous ongoing budget shortfall.

How is it, that policymakers and the Governor can say it is okay to talk about proposals that will slash critical funding in departments, reduce needed services, eliminate important programs, cut off access to health services, suspend cost of living that impact hundreds of thousands of children with autism, children with other disabilities and special needs, adults with disabilities, people with traumatic brain injuries, people with mental health needs, people with MS, seniors with Alzheimer's, people with HIV or AIDS, children with special needs in education, people with developmental disabilities, the blind, the deaf, seniors in poverty who depend on SSI/SSP, community organizations and workers who provide services who are barely surviving and hundreds of thousands of other vulnerable Californians, and yet not talk and actually consider ways to increase revenues?

It's not liberal bleeding heart talk or rhetoric to say that words matter and that people's lives matter even more.

The proverbial "table" is really big enough to include that too.

Putting other options on the table is fair. But leaving cuts - massive and awful cuts to our communities - on that table alone is terribly, terribly wrong. That is the reality we face without masking it with pleasant sounding words. It is a picture of a family dealing with their children with autism or mental health needs. It is a picture of a loved one with disabilities with a name. It's my sister. It's your parent or grandparent or cousin. It's a family taking in a child in foster care or adopting a child with special needs in the adoption assistance program that no one else wants. Its your neighbor. Its our community. It is what California should not be doing to its own.

Any talk of proposed tax increases in California is considered a non-starter for legislative Republicans and the Governor - though in recent days he seems to be shifting ever so slightly on that issue. He should shift a little more quickly.

I understand the politics of it - and understand the philosophy behind it, which is based on a more effective way to govern and curbing wasteful spending. That is a good thing. But no matter what party one belongs to, it is also true that no one truly wants to see people harmed. If that is true, why would anyone hang on to a point of view that at the end of the day, harms so many people simply because it was part of one's philosophy?

One doesn't have to sacrifice a progressive, liberal or conservative philosophy to be fair and do the right thing.

Words Used To Mask Harm

Words are used to mask harm. None of us should allow that to happen.

Those same policymakers and the Governor can talk about "hard choices" and say quickly without a pause, that increasing revenues is bad and can't be considered at all.

Some will even oppose any consideration of closing tax loopholes or consideration of ending some tax credits as just ways to simply raise taxes.

Words. Some people are good at unmasking words that they see as simply meaning Increasing or raising taxes. To them, those are bad words.

Okay, fine. Don't talk about tax increase or revenue enhancements . Call it a "tax surge" or call it a "revenue surge".

Call it a "budget surge".

Use whatever words to make it possible to talk about it and not violate sensibilities or philosophy and at least consider it on the same "proverbial table" where somehow it is okay to consider other terrible things: proposals that cut and harm services to the most vulnerable Californians.

Call proposals to consider raising revenues something different if that allows discussion and considering, in the same way proposals to cut critical human and health services are masked with other words that somehow gives permission or justification to do something bad with the notion that no one else will notice.

We notice.

But at least putting proposals to increase revenues on the proverbial table for discussion and consideration, next to the enormous and far, far larger stack of proposals and actual cuts that harm children with special needs including autism, that harm seniors, that harm people with mental health needs, that harm people with disabilities, that harm the blind, that harm the deaf, that harm low income families, that harm people with HIV/AIDS, that harm all of California.

Considering something and putting it on the table for consideration doesn't even mean passing it or doing it.

But at least it gives the impression of being fair, or being deliberate and considering other things along side of everything else that is bad.

And the words to describe that?

Being responsible. Being fair. Doing what is right.

We don't need other words to understand that.

The California Disability Community Action Network, is a non-partisan link to thousands of Californians with developmental and other disabilities, people with traumatic brain injuries, the Blind, the Deaf, their families, community organizations and providers, direct care, homecare and other workers, and other advocates to provide information on state (and eventually federal), local public policy issues.