Actor Warren Beatty to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Raise taxes

Associated Press

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Warren Beatty, an actor who has dabbled in politics across four decades, has some words of advice for fellow film star and now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger should raise taxes on the California rich and “terminate” his fund-raising and dinners with “the brokers of Wall Street” and the “lobbyists of K Street,” Beatty said.

Receiving a political award Friday night, the actor who played Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth in the 1998 movie, “Bulworth,” said: “Arnold. Be the action hero I know you can be. Be strong. Stand up and confront the wealthiest 1 percent of Californians who have benefited $12 billion a year from the Bush tax cuts.”

Beatty received the third annual Phillip Burton public service award Friday from the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights for a lifetime of political work. Burton was a liberal San Francisco congressman who died in 1983.

Beatty said he wants to root for a fellow actor in the governor’s office, but said he’s disappointed that Schwarzenegger is yielding “to a reactionary right-wing agenda in order to get a political party to become a president. That’s not so fine with me. It makes me sad for Arnold.”

Beatty said Schwarzenegger should lead the rich toward helping California.

“It’s called the haves giving a little more to the have nots,” he said. “Nobody likes taxes, but everybody likes a peaceful, compassionate, law-abiding, productive, protective society.”

Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Vince Sollitto replied Saturday: “Tax and spend rhetoric aside, California needs budget reform because it’s not a revenue problem, but a spending problem.”