I have been hearing from a lot of Republicans on the Assembly side of the Capitol that there is a budget deal that has been crafted and approved — that it would contain some deficit spending, though closer to $500 million rather than the billions proposed by the Democrats.

That said, I think that folks are a bit premature.  I just got off of the phone with Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman who assures me that there is no deal as now, and that his caucus has not signed off on a budget.

So, there is still hope that before this process is over, we can get to a budget that is balanced.  I certainly wouldn’t encourage any legislator to cast a vote for budget that is not.

I keep hearing that Speaker Nunez has important vacation plans that he doesn’t want to cancel.  The best way to do that is to give us a budget that doesn’t spend more than projected state revenues!

Anyways, I would hope we would see solidarity among our conservatives in the legislature, and we won’t rush to put up GOP votes for a budget until both caucuses are comfortable with the size and scope of spending contained in the budget.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.