California Budget Bites has a more detailed rundown of who is most impacted by the tax increases included in the recently passed California state budget… and guess what? The less money you make, the bigger the additional piece of flesh your state government now demands of you. In fact, the bottom fifth wind up paying twice as much of their income as the top 1%. Twice as much.

It is a crying shame that the Democratic Party permitted this farce of a budget to pass (the impact of which will weigh most heavily on those least able to deal with it), and even more of a crying shame that they permitted the tax increases to fall most heavily on those who could least afford it. Of course, the fact that the Republican Party is bound and determined to put the interests of the wealthiest Americans ahead of working and middle class folks (even at the cost of taking the state to the brink of insolvency) doesn’t help.
We need budget reform (eliminating the archaic 2/3rds majority requirement to pass a budget), and we need authentic electoral reform (aka Instant Run-Off Voting and multi-member districts with Proportional Representation).