315 Bq States Das

States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

States DAs States DAs...............................................................................................................................................................1 California DA.........................................................................................................................................................2 Cali – DA.................................................................................................................................................................3 Cali – DA.................................................................................................................................................................4 Cali – Uniqueness...................................................................................................................................................5 AT: Mercury News Evidence.................................................................................................................................6 AT: LA Times Evidence.........................................................................................................................................7 AT: Sacramento Bee Evidence..............................................................................................................................8 AT: Spending Good 4 Econ...................................................................................................................................9 Texas DA...............................................................................................................................................................10 Texas – The Disadvantage...................................................................................................................................11 Texas – The Disadvantage...................................................................................................................................12 Texas Uniqueness.................................................................................................................................................13

Notes: I just included the DAs that BQ worked on. Thanks to Sam Fishell for the Cali Cards.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

California DA

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Cali – DA California spending on the brink - pay cuts gave the state just enough money to avoid crisis until budget is implemented. Los Angeles Times, Nancy Vogel and Michael Rothfeld, staff writers, "Governor slashes workers' pay," 7/31/08 SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today ordered his administration to lay off thousands of part-time state workers and to work with the state controller to temporarily slash the pay of most full-time employees to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour. Schwarzenegger administration officials said the move will help give the state enough cash to get by until a state budget is signed. The budget was due July 1 but is still being negotiated by the governor and legislative leaders. "It is a terrible situation to be in," Schwarzenegger said after signing an executive order. "I don't think any governor wants to be in this situation."

New California spending tanks the deal - fiscal discipline key to passing sales tax increase. Daniel Weintraub, staff writer for the Sacramento Bee, MercuryNews.com, "Chaotic scene in state capital usually means budget is near," 8/1/08, http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_10065195 It used to be said that state leaders couldn't get a budget deal until the temperatures in the capital city topped 100 degrees. But since the coming of air conditioning, that maxim no longer holds. Now it's more accurate to say that the opposing sides won't agree until everybody watching them pretty much concludes that they are on the verge of a partisan meltdown. In other words, they're getting close to a deal. That's not the same as closing the deal. It's common for the party leaders to have the framework of an agreement, even an outline of a new budget plan, but then be stymied for days or even weeks over a disagreement on details. But by listening to the legislative leaders talk and tapping into the chatter in the Capitol hallways, you can begin to sense what a new budget agreement might look like, whenever it comes. Here's my best guess: o It is going to include some borrowing. There is just no way they are going to close a $15 billion gap with spending cuts and tax increases alone. So expect some gimmicks. Lawmakers, for instance, might find a way to tap into local government funds. Also, the governor's proposal to borrow against future state lottery earnings is still very much alive. I would not be surprised if a scaled-down version of the governor's plan emerged as part of this package. o The final deal will include some tax increases. The worst-kept secret in the Capitol is that at least a handful of Republicans are prepared to accept some tax increases in exchange for what they call "budget reform." If Democrats were to accept a strict limit on future spending, a top priority for Republicans, the majority party could probably get enough Republican votes to pass a sales tax increase. But the Democrats won't go there because such a limit would constrain growth in government services during the next economic expansion

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Cali – DA California is key to the US economy Ray Haynes, California Assembly member representing Riverside and Temecula, 9-2-2003; “Who’s Dragging Down Who?”, http://theamericashow.net/archives/Columns/Haynes/20030902HaynesDragging.html I think it is important people know what is happening in California government. One in seven people who live in the United States live in California. California constitutes ten per cent of the entire national economy, and it is the fifth (or sixth or seventh or eighth) largest economy in the world (our ranking shrinks each year Davis stays in office). When California’s economy hiccups, it causes a national economic earthquake. A large, diverse, and powerful economic actor is important not just to those of us who live here, but to those who walk the halls of Washington power as well. Government at any level can’t do much to help the economy. The economy is driven by people’s needs and the endless effort of private companies to meet those needs. Government, however, can screw it up. Using tax and regulatory policy, and government subsidies, government impacts individual preferences by increasing the price of one product or service (or decreasing another), and shifting limited social resources to government-preferred activities. If these preferred activities aren’t beneficial to the economy as a whole, government causes the economy to falter. Jobs are lost, people are hurt, and the economy shrinks. Given these facts, it would be important to cover any government function that affects ten per cent of the economy. Sacramento should be the focus of a lot of media attention.

Economic collapse leads to global nuclear war Walter Russell Mead, former Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, World Policy Institute, 1992; "Depending on the Kindness of Strangers," New Perspectives Quarterly 9.3 (Summer 1992) pp. 28-30. Hundreds of millions – billions – of people have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles – and drawn closer to the west – because they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates – or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India – these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 30s.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Cali – Uniqueness Uniqueness and Internal Link - California’s budget is on the brink of collapse – increased spending devastates regulations San Jose Mercury News 7-11-2008 (http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_9848677) If nothing else, the California budget imbroglio has brought the Capitol's stark ideological conflict - very liberal Democrats vs. very conservative Republicans and no more than a handful of even semi-moderates - into razor-sharp focus. With the Democrats now insisting on more than $8 billion in new taxes, mostly on business and the affluent, to cover much of the state's whopping budget deficit, and Republicans rejecting them as damaging to the state's struggling economy, the stage is set for a cage fight. And that wouldn't be such a bad thing. The ideological warriors have been sparring for years, but each year have avoided a toe-to-toe slugfest over taxes and permanent spending cuts by conjuring up new accounting gimmicks or ways to borrow money. 'Line in the sand' However, this year, with the structural deficit magnified by recession, the dueling factions seem poised to settle it once and for all. "We don't want another temporary fix," Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said Wednesday as he and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass described their budget, financed largely with new taxes, as a "line in the sand." "We can't cut any more," Bass said. "This budget defines what Democrats say we need to do to keep California on an even keel." The Democratic budget not only raises taxes by $8.2 billion a year, mostly by adding higher income tax rates for upper-income taxpayers, but it restores many of the spending reductions that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had proposed in May. And that, Republicans say, makes the Democratic budget a non-starter - which is no idle threat since at least some GOP votes would be needed to pass both the budget and any new taxes. Assemblyman Roger Niello of Sacramento, a Republican point man on the budget, described it as "a massive tax increase in a very weak economy" and "a dysfunctional solution." But he and other GOP lawmakers haven't been willing to get specific on their spending cuts. And where's the governor? This vague reaction implies that he's wandering in no-man's land as legislators prepare for political war: "You have to be open-minded, and that's the only way we can get a compromise done. So, I'm open-minded, but I'm against tax increases." Without a budget, California will run out of cash in another month or so, unable to pay the bills it could legally pay and probably forced to float a short-term, high-interest loan. But despite the hoopla, the lack of a budget is less important than bringing this perpetual, tiresome wrangle to at least a semi-permanent conclusion, no matter how long it takes. Democrats contend their budget does that with billions of dollars in permanent new taxes. But if enacted, it could spawn even worse problems because it increases the state's reliance on volatile income taxes on the affluent. Under fixed spending formulas, especially for education, an economic recovery could send revenues soaring in a few years, locking in higher levels of spending that could not be sustained when the economy cooled again.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

AT: Mercury News Evidence 1.) There evidence doesn’t actually conclude anything about California’s economy overall, it just says that some areas have had job losses. The article even concludes that key area such as tech have had growth. 2.) The evidence goes our way, it proves that cali’s econ is on the edge now. 3.) Even if cali’s in a mild recession it’s key to prevent total economic collapse.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

AT: LA Times Evidence 1.) This evidence flows aff – The article says that California will have to borrow money from other sectors and then pay it back. The counterplan would force California to borrow even more money, which would devastate the California economy. The evidence is great uniqueness indicating that cali can’t increase it’s spending.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

AT: Sacramento Bee Evidence 1.) Their evidence concludes that tax wouldn’t be enough to offset. 2.) Any tax change wouldn’t come quickly enough. The Sacramento Bee, 7-20-2008, “Some see taxing more services as way to ease California budget crunch”, http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1095533.html A quick overhaul of the tax structure isn't likely. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass want to form a blue-ribbon commission to study the tax code, that won't happen until after the current budget is passed. And even once the commission gets going, history says a thorough revamp won't pass easily. The idea of broadening the sales tax base has been floated before without much success, and may face fierce resistance in the Legislature.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

AT: Spending Good 4 Econ 1.) Your evidence doesn’t assume the current situation in California, our evidence is on point that the current deal is key to prevent a financial crisis. The CP trades off tanking the cali econ.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Texas DA

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Texas – The Disadvantage a.) The Texas economy is holding, but increased spending will push it over the edge. Brendan Case Staff Writer for the Dallas Morning News 7/21/08 “Troubled economy has Texans recalling banking collapse of the '80s” http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DNBankCrash_21bus.ART.State.Edition2.4d58396.html What does Mr. Cassidy see now? More trouble – but he believes the situation is less dire than in the early '90s. "Over the next three years, upwards of 300 banks could fail," he said. "But from a bank failure standpoint and an industry collapse standpoint, we were in far worse shape in '90 and '91 than the banking industry today." There's no guarantee that some failures won't occur in Texas, where more than 600 banks, most of them small, have about $255 billion in assets. Banks here saw a slight deterioration in credit quality during the first three months of the year, according to Randall James, commissioner of the Texas Department of Banking. On average, however, regulatory reports as of March 31 showed that the banks were outperforming the national average, and had a lower proportion of past-due loans. "Texas is probably as pristine a market as there is in the nation right now in terms of loan performance and asset quality," said Curtis Carpenter, managing director of Austin-based Sheshunoff & Co. Investment Banking. Reviving memories Perhaps wisdom gleaned from the 1980s helped a bit. Moreover, Texas missed out on much of the housing bubble; hence its current housing downturn is much milder than the bust in bubble states such as California and Florida. So most Texas banks have less exposure to the implosion, Mr. Carpenter said. Meanwhile, Texas is gaining jobs while the nation as a whole is losing them. Even as Texas consumers struggle with soaring gasoline prices and some of the priciest electricity in the nation, rising energy prices also fuel royalty payments and activity by the state's oil and gas industry. But a string of banking failures – even elsewhere – is sure to revive memories of the 1980s, when the state was today's housing bust, subprime mortgage mess and economic downturn rolled into one.

b.) Alternative Energy costs billions Michael Kanellos, Staff Writer for CNET, 1/24/2007, “Why it's not easy being green”, http://news.cnet.com/Why-its-not-easybeing-green/2100-11395_3-6152851.html BB Second, installing an alternative-energy infrastructure isn't cheap, despite the influx of venture money into the field and the strong demand for technologies such as solar. If oil drops below $55 a barrel, most biofuel concepts will be unprofitable, Arvizu projected. Even if oil doesn't drop that low, it will cost a lot to get an ethanol-solar-wind society off the ground. To meet the Department of Energy's goal of making ethanol 30 percent of the U.S. transportation fuel budget, fuel manufacturers will have to invest $100 billion in refineries. To make wind power 20 percent of the source of the electricity in the U.S., it will take $500 billion in infrastructure investments.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Texas – The Disadvantage c.) Texas’ economic collapse spills over to us economy— Texas’ economy mirrors u.s. economy Texas Workforce Comission, September, 2002. “The texas economy: an age of global economic opportunity”, http://socrates.cdr.state.tx.us/iSocrates/Files/TexasEconomy2002.pdf

In years past, conversations about national economic trends or phenomena might have been viewed as of secondary concern to Texans. After all, an economy driven by Oil and Gas, related industrial sectors and other natural resources moved almost counter-cyclically to the national economy. Today, however, the Texas economy mirrors the U.S. economy much more closely and national and global trends have a greater bearing on the direction and economic health of the state. Like the U.S. economy, the Texas economy has many facets. When the question is asked, "where has the growth been?" the answer is not 

always obvious. Consider just one part, such as job growth, for example. Employment growth or decline can be discussed  in terms of geographic region, such as the state of Texas or particular regions within it. It can also be viewed in terms of  industries or specific occupations. Moreover, job growth can be viewed as both percentage change and as absolute change.  The following sections will address the question of where growth, decline, and projected changes have occurred in Texas  from a demographic, geographic, industry, occupational, and earnings perspective. 

d.) Economic stagnation leads to nuclear war Walter Russel Mead, fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, 1992, NEW PERSPECTIVES But what if it can’t? What if the global economy stagnates—or even shrink In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia, China, India—these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the ‘30s.

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States DAs DDI 2008 BQ Steve Quam

Texas Uniqueness The Texas economy is currently rebounding, but increased spending could send it down the drain. Steve Brown, Staff Writer for Knight Ridder. May 1999 “Overbuilding, Economic Concerns Make Texas Real Estate Experts Wary.” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5553/is_199905/ai_n22401181 - Texas' real estate market is rebounding from last fall's numbing credit crunch, but worries about overbuilding and an economic slowdown still have property investors and developers looking over their shoulders. "This economy is about as good as it gets," Federal Reserve economist Dr. Harvey Rosenblum told real estate developers at a conference Wednesday in Dallas. "The real question in everybody's mind is how long will it last?" The Texas economy continues to confound prognosticators.

The Texas economy is on the edge right now. Danielle DiMartino Staff writer for The Dallas Morning News 5/19/2005 “Its all building to a fall” http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/all/stories/052005dnbusdimartino.c486ed70.htm l The next piece on the Dallas market from Danielle DiMartino is online. "Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, noted that many areas of Texas have seen resurging economic growth. Dallas was not one of them. 'The weakest spot is North Texas,' Mr. Fisher said, 'largely because of the hit that telecom, technology and aviation took.'" "And yet 'builders just keep building,' said David Houston. 'The risk is not so much the prices of the homes themselves, it's the loans being made on the homes. The danger I see here is that people are buying so much more home than they can afford.'" If that is the case, it is strictly a function of the easy money. "Jim Pearson of Pearson Appraisal Co., 'This is where you're seeing a lot of the problems, where irresponsible or downright fraudulent lenders are trying to find unethical appraisers to work with them.'" "What will happen when those loans are stress-tested, if the local economy doesn't improve, if the national economy falters, if interest rates rise?"

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