California Governor Jerry Brown proposed a four-day workweek to reduce pay for state employees and $8.3 billion of other cuts, mostly in welfare and medical care for the poor, to help close a $15.7 billion budget deficit.
Cutting the standard week would be the equivalent of a 5 percent pay cut, saving $400 million a year, Brown said today in revising his budget for the year beginning July 1. Health care for the poor would take the biggest reduction, about $1.2 billion, with $1.1 billion sliced from welfare and care for the disabled. School spending would grow $1.5 billion less than planned.
"I said in the beginning, when I ran for this job, that it's taken a long time, nearly a decade, to get into this mess," Brown said at a briefing for reporters in Sacramento. "We're not going to get out of it in a year."
