Excerpt
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): President Obama won't submit his new budget blueprint to Congress until next month, but local officials across the country are already bracing for bad news.
As part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling, spending must be capped at $1 trillion. And with the money from the federal stimulus programs drying up, local governments are worried they won't get the help they need.
For a closer look at the challenges being faced in two different cities, we are joined by Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, and Danny Jones, the Republican mayor of Charleston, W.Va.
More excerpts
DANNY JONES (R), mayor of Charleston, W.Va.: I -- speaking only for myself, I think that the if the federal government is going to share money with cities and different political subdivisions around the country, we ought to go back to the way it was done in the '70s, through revenue sharing, and do it equally according to population all throughout the country, and do away with all the specific winner and loser projects, you get this, you get that.
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ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D), mayor of Los Angeles: What we'd like to see the federal government do is not just cut, however. They have got to invest as well. So they have got to invest in making sure that our roads, our bridges, our ports, our airports are competing with roads, bridges, airports and ports around the world.
They've to make the investments that the federal government has always made. You know, every president since Eisenhower, Democratic and Republican both, have supported investing in the highway system, in our infrastructure system. So those are the kinds of investments that they can make while they're also having to make the cuts that they're going to have to do at a time of high deficits and debt.
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ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: You know, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz. -- or second vice president said yesterday, there are smart cuts and there are dumb cuts.
When you cut infrastructure spending that can create millions of jobs, if we don't pass the surface transportation bill, as an example, we're cutting our nose to spite our face. If you cut our schools and our work force development programs that can retrain our workers for the jobs in the new economy, those are dumb cuts.
So we believe that the federal government has to be smart about the cuts that they make and smart about the investments that we need to make to make America competitive around the world. That's what it's about.
You go to China, Japan, Korea, you go to Western Europe, you go to the developing world, and they're making those investments in their ports, in their airports, in their bridges, in their roads. We have to continue to do the same thing if we want to compete around the world.
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ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: Well, I think, though, in the case of both West Virginia and California and virtually every state in the United States, we always say that the difference between a state, the city and the federal government is, the federal government can print money.
That's why we're in -- an unlimited fashion -- and that is why we are in the problems that we are in. State governments balance their backs -- balance their budget on the backs of cities, counties and school districts. We're the only ones that can't pass the buck. We actually have to make those really tough choices.
We want Congress to make an easy choice, and that's invest in job creation, invest in America's workers again.
COMMENT: Most Americans are in debt because we spend more than our income. Most of us have some sort of big loan (mortgage or car loan), then you add those who have more than 2 or 3 credit cards that are ALWAYS maxed-out. This is our own behavior.
So, why would we expect governments (local, state, federal) to behave differently? They are run by human beings, after all, that tend to behave the way we do.
We should not expect governments to behave differently until we citizens change our own behavior.
Also, government income is from taxes, so JUST cutting taxes is never a good idea.
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