Store Research
Gov. Warren's 1948 Budget for California
January 20, 2011
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Governor Earl Warren, overseeing the 1948 post-WWII state budget, offered the following assessment:
As has been the case with every Governor, almost without exception, at each regular session of the Legislature since our State was admitted to the Union, I must present to you the largest budget ever submitted to date. This invariable practice of Governors is not a matter of choice, but of necessity.
This rising curve of expenditure coincides with the most phenomenal growth ever experienced by any state in the history of our Country. It reflects the insistence of our people upon ever higher standards of education, public health, social welfare, institutional care, public works, and other necessary governmental services. It demonstrates the tendency to shift the costs of government from local taxation to state taxation. It represents the practice of increasing through constitutional amendment, initiative measures and legislative action, the fixed charges of government whereby state expenditures are controlled by legislative formula as distinguished from administrative discretion.
It also reflects the inflationary forces which have accelerated during recent years—the same forces that bear down so heavily on the budgets of all workmen, housewives and businessmen.
But, beyond all of these factors, these expanding budgets mean that those of us who are charged with the administration of State Government are responding to the demands of a considerate and progressive people who want better standards of living, and a utilization and conservation of our great natural resources, as well as humane and efficient government. When our State Government does not move fast enough in this direction to suit them, the people themselves initiate and adopt their own legislation through the ballot box.