Struggling to make your mortgage? How about we pay you less?

Wow, it is pretty obvious that the republicans (and more specifically Schwarzenegger) have run out of ideas on how to actually run a government.  Here's the story today that Arnold has decided that the way to balance the state's budget is to slash almost all of the state employee's salaries to the Federal minimum wage.  Are you an attorney working for the State Attorney General?  Minimum wage for you!  How about the engineers who build your roads?  Minimum wage!  CHP?  Minimum.  Better get to the DMV quick - I'd hate to see how much more surly the DMV workers will be with their paychecks slashed... 

I have an idea - how about we have a government which actually acts like serious adults, rather than petulant children?  I really don't understand how something utterly stupid like this could actually be thrown out as a serious policy proposal by any government official.  Do they really think that this will really help the state's budget?  Hmmm, I guess having 90 percent of the state's jobs go vacant would help the budget in the short term, of course, no republican thinks about long-term devastation of the state government's ability to function, so who cares?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans next week to slash the pay of more than 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum of $6.55 per hour to help ease the state's budget crisis, according to a draft executive order obtained by The Chronicle on Wednesday.

But administration officials, who asked to remain anonymous, said that about 200,000 of the state's 245,000 workers, both hourly and salaried, will see their pay trimmed back to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour, saving the state up to $1.2 billion a month. Dropping the temporary and short-time workers will save an additional $28.5 million each month.

But the governor's plan could face an immediate challenge from Democratic state Controller John Chiang, who will continue to pay state workers their full salaries, even in the face of Schwarzenegger's executive order, said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for the controller. The governor will have to take Chiang to court if he wants to stop him, she said.

"The controller hasn't seen any executive order, but he would urge the governor to rethink his proposal," she said. "This hasn't been addressed by the courts and if it's ruled illegal, it could cost the state a tremendous amount in damages."

"Cutting workers' salaries will do nothing meaningful to improve our cash position," he said in a statement. The executive order is "nothing more than a poorly devised strategy to put pressure on the Legislature to enact a budget."

"We are the victims of the incompetence of the Legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger," said Jim Zamora, a spokesman for SEIU Local 1000, which represents 95,000 state workers. "Because they can't sit down and pass a balanced budget, state workers must live in fear of having their wages slashed as much as 90 percent. We are not chess pieces, we are real people."

Emily Clayton, policy coordinator for the California Labor Federation, added: "Holding state workers hostage is not a fair way to get to a budget agreement."

Last night, news broke that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign an Executive Order on Monday slashing the wages of over 200,000 state employees to the bare minimum.

Not California's minimum wage of $8 per hour. The federal minimum wage of $6.55. Six dollars and fifty-five cents an hour.

Imagine trying to pay your bills on $6.55 an hour. Now imagine what will happen to thousands of vital service workers forced to live on poverty-level wages. A nauseating irony: many state employees may need to seek aid from the very state services that employ them.

This is absolutely outrageous. And the only way we can stop Arnold is by raising our voices as loud as possible in protest before Monday morning. Please sign our "Stop Arnold" petition to Governor Schwarzenegger. On Monday morning, we'll deliver thousands of your signatures to the Governor's office:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/StopArnold