"California will soon be hearing a new cry of alarm from its movie tough-guy governor, whose upcoming state of the state speech will be unable to gloss over the reality that this year's budget shortfall is even worse than last year's.
Maybe the numbers won't be quite as high: The deficit staring at state officials might be a "mere" $20 billion instead of the $40 billion or so of one year ago. But that's only because of last year's cuts, which lower considerably the starting point.
So the pressure for large cuts is again upon us. Some will surely want to lop 15 percent or so from whatever was allocated to state programs during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Some will want to chop even more from programs that took substantial hits last year.
But budget cutters beware: The moves that save you a little money this year might end up costing far more down the line. Of course, because of term limits, many people making key decisions this year will not be around to cope with the consequences even as soon as one year from now. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a prime example.
It's impossible, of course, to list all the potential moves that might backfire. But here's one: Cutting funding for battered women's shelters, a 2009 cut that has been partly rescinded, costs not only untold human misery when women are forced to stay with violent husbands or boyfriends. But the cuts can cost more money than they save when those women show up at emergency rooms, trauma centers and hospitals for treatment of injuries that could have been avoided if they'd found a shelter. No one has yet calculated how much the 2009 closures - some later reversed - will eventually cost.
Similarly, no one can know how much an unheralded upcoming prison system cut might cost.
The prisons are due very soon to"