If you want to see the difference between Democrats and Republicans, look no further than the fight between Democratic state Controller John Chiang and our governor who, despite sometime pretending not to be, is a Republican.
The Republican ideologues in the legislature have no productive agenda on the budget and want to hold the entire state hostage to their radical agenda. Meanwhile, our governor decided to take some hostages of his own by trying to withhold most of the paycheck of over 200,000 state employees.
Chiang is standing up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and fighting for our hard-working public servants. They deserve to be paid the wages we owe them, not be forced to involuntarily loan money to our state while our state legislature cobbles together some sort of budget deal.
Not only is it unfair to stiff them, John Chiang understands that it’s fundamentally unfair to shift the burden of the state’s budget problems onto the working class and middle-class folks who work for our state.
I applaud John Chiang for showing real leadership in this fight. Thank you, Controller Chiang.