This morning, click here to read my co-commentary along with FR Contributor Barry Jantz.
But as I compiled stories this morning from papers around the state and country on the Governor’s speech, I started to get frustrated as I read all of praise coming from liberal Democrats. Well, here are a few of the choice quotes, following by analysis from the Wall Street Journal that is worth a read.
Recalled Democrat Governor Gray Davis in the Orange County Register:
"He gave the kind of speech I would like to have given."
Democrat Speaker Fabian Nunez in the Washington Post:
"He’s hitting all the Democratic notes in the song. There’s no question that his tone has changed dramatically."
Democrat State Senator Jackie Speier in the San Francisco Chronicle:
"If I would have closed my eyes, I could have believed that speech was being given by a Democrat.”
Democrat Senate Leader Don Perata in the San Jose Mercury News:
"It great to have the governor on board so we can get these long overdue investments accomplished. However, the governor’s proposing a lot more spending than we are. It’s unclear how he plans to pay for it.”
Oh, and here is the take of John Fund in today’s Political Dairy of the Wall Street Journal:
Santa Schwarzenegger
A year ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s State of the State address was a ringing call for reforms to curb the influence of public employee unions and restrain one of America’s most bloated state governments. After untold millions of negative ads by those same unions and his own tactical mistakes led to the defeat of his reform agenda last November, the governor has now taken a political U-turn and decided that if he can’t lick his enemies he will join them. The Terminator became a Pander Bear in yesterday’s State of the State speech.
The centerpiece of the governor’s legislative agenda is $70 billion in new bond authority for an already heavily indebted state. But as GOP Assemblyman Chuck DeVore pointed out “without a meaningful reform of environmental regulations and labor laws only a small fraction of that borrowed money will actually go towards building anything.” Absent such reforms, the same special interests that plunged that plunged the state into the fiscal hell that led to the 2003 recall that brought Mr. Schwarzenegger to power will be the main beneficiaries, not infrastructure-starved taxpayers.
The governor’s other proposals were a grab bag of appeals to various constituencies. Parents with college-bound children were promised a roll back of tuition increases at state universities, with no mention of efforts to control their soaring overhead. Lower-income workers were tossed a $1 increase in the state’s minimum wage, which will likely cost jobs more than it will help them.
Then there is education spending The governor called for increasing education spending by 8.7% this year, the highest percentage increase in seven years. But his efforts to appease the spending appetites of the Democratic legislature didn’t get him much. Senate President Don Perata declared that the increase in education funding was “clearly not enough. I’m not sure how much would be enough.” Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez was a little more conciliatory, noting that he has seen “the governor grow politically” in the weeks since his special election defeat. That comment sent chills down the spines of conservatives watching the governor’s speech.
It is striking to watch a governor who called for ‘blowing up bureaucratic boxes’ a year ago now say that the answer to the state’s problems is to "build it" and the solution will come. The governor’s new tack may indeed get him through the 2006 election but the contrast with last year’s State of the State speech is so dramatic that the Los Angeles Times was moved to note that “a central question (of the coming campaing) is apt to be whether Schwarzenegger is motivated more by core beliefs or a quest for personal success.” The early evidence isn’t encouraging.