Budget Battles

I did a little research today on the budget of the state of Arizona. 

Some interesting things:

The budget for FY 2008 is $9.9Billion

The deficit for 2008 is somewhere between $1billion and $1.6billion (that's nine zeroes.) The calculator on my imac's dashboard could only handle up to 100million, so I had to go find a regular calculator.

The deficit is about 16% of the state budget, which is the worst of any state-even worse than CA.

There are no pie charts on the internet that I could find that show where the state's budget is spent, but at least 43%, and maybe as much as over 50% of the state budget is spent on education. Of that, 80% goes to "faculty salaries."

45% of the state's budget is "protected from budget cuts"---what??

So, if education is 45% (approx) of the budget, and 45% of the budget is protected, that only leaves 10% of the budget left to cut, if not education. So, if we cut all of that, we still have another 6% of the entire state budget that needs to go, and will have to come from education. That's only $600,000,000 or so. 

I just want to know about the 45% of the budget that is "protected"...

(I almost forgot, in case you were wondering, according to the internet [controlled by the guy in Utah who is keeping a Dalek in his basement] it's either the fault of the republican legislature or the democratic [don't let the door hit you in the behind on the way out] former governor. I'm not really sure which. Maybe it's even both their faults)

Now I will go pick the kids up from school, and write about something else next time. Maybe the economy in Europe and all.