The human service area contributed 13.7 % to the solution, the third highest percentage of cuts in the budget behind only education and general government. But the committee significantly reduced the impact of the cuts. In CalWORKs  the committee reduced welfare to work requirements for families with small children and saved an estimated $175 million in child care and transportation costs. The committee wisely avoided making cuts to CalWORKs that would reduce grants or eligibility thus preserving maximum reimbursement for increased welfare expenses from the federal stimulus. For example, the committe rejected (again) the proposal to impose self-sufficiency reviews on sanctioned families or cut the CW grant by 6 %. The committee reduced the SSI grant by $5 but rejected the proposal to take the grant to the federal minimum and rejected the proposals to eliminate CAPI and CFAP.

The budget includes large cuts to almost all areas of state government including K-12 education, higher education, community colleges, the judiciary, and health. One area largely spared was corrections which suffered only a 5.7 % reduction. The committee report is attached.

The budget includes a $4 billion reserve that is created from a combination of tax increases, enhanced collections and other revenue enhancers.  The Governor, State Treasurer Lockyer and Controller Chang are all urging the Legislature to have a reserve of at least $4 billion in order to obtain short term financing to fill cash flow holes in the budget. If these funds are not in the final budget or are not replaced with other revenue, the budget may have to be reduced further to create the reserve. This means that health and human service programs are still at grave risk even though the worst of the proposals have been rejected for the moment. WCLP will be working with a broad coalition of orgaqnizations to urge the Legislature to keep the revenue in the package so that deeper cuts can be avoided.