Cutting The Budget Fat

By Chuck Walker

Legislative spending is out of control. Inefficiencies are running wild and nobody is at the helm of this sinking ship who really knows what to do. But fear not, because I have a plan that has been PROVEN to work.

Runaway spending by the Assembly and Senate, under the approval of Governor Davis, has inflated the budget from $50 billion in 1996, to well over $90 billion in 2002. Yet, demands for services have only increased 21% over the same period.

Politicians are experts at hiding money in areas that appear legitimate, which then become their own personal slush fund. For example, many governments budget for hiring employees in various capacities. This is money that is allocated for the specific purpose of employing people. But when the job requisitions go unfilled, where does that budgeted money go? It just turns into money available for politicians to spend on buying votes or funding personal projects.

I would require that all unfilled job requisitions be closed until the economy recovers.

But the biggest problem with government today is the larger it grows, the less efficient it becomes. Obsolete and redundant processes are inevitable unless a pro-active effort is made to optimize them and make sure they are kept in line.

Many of the large corporations in America and California have recognized that large organizations tend to be inefficient and lack cost effectiveness. To overcome this troubling reality, they have employed a highly effective and proven method of monitoring their businesses from the inside out. They had to, in order to survive.

The results have been nothing short of dramatic.

General Electric, after employing these methods, has cut $8 billion from their overhead during a three-year period. Honeywell has reduced their cost of doing business by $2.3 billion over a similar three-year period and Toshiba has cut $4 billion in waste in just one year!

Now it is time for California to do the same.

The methodology I speak of is called, Six Sigma. It is a proven method for making organizations become efficient and be able to spot wasteful and costly programs.

The company where I work, Seagate Technology, has employed these methods and has turned around the business from losing close to $500 million per year to a robust and competitive market-leader with $6.5 billion in revenues and over $641 million in profits.

California needs this kind of critical assessment and changes made to their way of doing business or we will sink into bankruptcy.

Please, help me make California work again.

Vote Chuck Walker For Governor

Pro-Business

Pro-People

Pro-California