Transcript of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivering State of the State addres
Bee Capitol Bureau
Sacramento Bee
01/06/2010
Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you Senate President pro Tem Steinberg, Speaker Bass, Senator Hollingsworth, Assemblyman Blakeslee, Attorney General Brown, Treasurer Lockyer, Secretary of State Bowen, Controller Chiang, Insurance Commissioner Poizner, Superintendent of Public Instruction O'Connell, Members of the Board of Equalization, all my cabinet secretaries, my Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy and members of the legislature. It's good to see everyone here together again.
Now, I would like to just introduce a few guests I have up in the Gallery. First of all, my wife and First Lady Maria Shriver with our four children. (Applause) Then my friend Secretary George Shultz and his wonderful wife Charlotte. (Applause) And another friend, Mayor Willie Brown. He also was Speaker Willie Brown at one point. (Applause) And then Alice Huffman, President of the California NAACP; (Applause) then Speaker Hertzberg -- where is Speaker Hertzberg? Right over here, Hertzberg and his wife Cindy. (Applause) Also known as Hertzie. (Laughter) And then also we have Jack Scott, our Community College Chancellor, a big hand to him also. Thank you for the great work. (Applause) And then we have a very, very, very special guest here, Sara Granda, who overcame great obstacles to pass her Bar Exam and became an attorney. Let's give her a special big, big hand for the great work that she has been doing. (Applause)
Now, I want to begin with a true story from which we can draw a worthwhile lesson. As you might guess, the Schwarzenegger household is something of a menagerie -- an Austrian bodybuilder, a TV journalist, four children, a dog, a normal goldfish, a hamster and so forth -- and in recent years we added a miniature pony and a pot-bellied pig. (Laughter) Now, it's not unusual for me to look up from working on the budget or something and to find the pig and the pony standing right there in front of me and staring at me. (Laughter)
Now, the dog's food, which we keep in a canister with a screwed-on lid, sits on the top of the dog's kennel. And the pony has now learned how to knock the canister off the top of the kennel and then he and the pig wedge it into the corner. Now, there's this ridge on the lid of the canister and the pig with his snout pushes this ridge around and around until it loosens up and then they roll the canister around on the floor until the food spills all out. And then, of course, they go to town and they eat it.
Now, I have no idea how they ever figured all of this out, to tell you the truth. I mean, it's like humans figuring out how to create fire. But it is the greatest example of teamwork and I love it. It's about teamwork. So one lesson to draw from the pig and the pony story is what we can accomplish when we work together.
And last year we here in this room did some great, great work together. We had a pig and pony year. And I want to make sure now that before some reporters write that I compared the legislators with pigs and ponies, that that is not the message. (Laughter) The message is about working together, teamwork. Together, as a team -- as fractious and tentative and uncertain as it might have been -- together, we got California through the front end of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Although not without pain, we closed a budget gap of $60 billion plus.
Now, these decisions were very hard for both sides of the aisle. On the Republican side, we had leaders who sacrificed their careers or put them at risk. On the Democratic side, we had legislators who were threatened by their own interest groups. To those on both sides of the aisle who took these risks for the good of the state, you have my deepest admiration.
We did what we had to do. We made painful spending cuts. We passed temporary tax increases. We permanently eliminated COLAs for most state programs and we made major reforms in welfare and parole.
