'We must stop the bleeding'

Hammered by the poor economy, California's budget deficit has gotten so bad that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed raising taxes by $4.7 billion and slashing spending by almost the same amount within the next seven months.Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican and for years a steadfast opponent of tax hikes, proposed increasing the state sales tax by 1 and 1/2 percent for the next three years and expanding it to services such as golfing, amusement parks and furniture repair.
In September, Schwarzenegger signed what was supposed to be a balanced budget for 2008-09. But now the 2008-09 deficit is already estimated at $11.2 billion.
"In the six weeks since I signed our last budget, the mortgage crisis has deepened, unemployment has increased and the stock market has lost almost 20 percent of its value," he said.