Last night the California State Assembly passed a budget and sent it over to the Senate for their approval or rejection. The budget came out of the lower house with the support of all Democrats present, and slightly over the minimum number of Republican votes to get to the two-thirds required.
Let me start this commentary by reminding FR readers that like almost all of you, I am a far-away spectator to what goes on under the Capitol dome — I am in Southern California myself. Not being 
a denizen of the State Capitol, one tends to have a better perspective, I think, of the big picture. So from here, I can tell you that the passage of this budget out of the Assembly is nothing that should excite taxpayers, and certainly it is not good news for Republican Party leaders, donors and activists. The budget that was passed this morning was not support by over two-thirds of GOP legislators for a reason — it is a vastly inferior budget to one that would have been passed if there was a Republican majority in the Assembly.
Let’s make no bones about it, this document, by and large, continues to reflect the budget priorities set by decades of dominance of liberal interest groups in Sacramento, and the fact that in starting off the budget process, Governor Schwarzenegger was not aggressive in trying to prune the thickly overgrown tree that has become our bloated state budget. (Someone characterized the Governor’s initial budget proposal as "downing the ball on the GOP’s own 20 yard line"). In fact, I noted with some amusement at the end of a press conference yesterday afternoon on the budget that Speaker Fabian Nunez actually quipped that he was, "more conservative than the Governor when it comes to fiscal prudency," referring to the fact that Democrats came back with a proposal that spent less than that proposal by the moderate Governor. So it is very important for everyone to understand, this is a DEMOCRAT budget, plain and simple.
Now, that said, much credit now needs to go to Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines and their budget negotiators. Because it does take a two-thirds vote, and Democrats could not pass a budget on their own, negotiations needed to take place. The reality is that the partisan makeup of the legislature pretty much puts the Democrats in the drivers’ seat and so Ackerman and Villines had to start making demands of out to alter the blueprint that Democrats put forward. In those negotiations, Republicans did achieve some significant policy wins. Deficit spending was reduced to only a half-billion (originally it would have been over $2 billion, a prudent reserve of over $3 billion was established, and more. There are a few hundred million dollars in tax cuts that were negotiated — but (and it’s a BIG "but") they are not set to go into effect this budget cycle (our liberal Democrats simply couldn’t muster up the votes to get to two-thirds to implement a tax cut now, go figure). Which means they are negotiable, again, as part of next years budget kabuki dance.
The key here is that Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines and his budget team clearly felt that this budget was "as good as it was going to get" for taxpaying Californians. They clearly felt that a prolonged budget stalemate would have ultimately resulted in a worse budget, thus a deal was struck.
It is important to keep things in perspective, though. Winning some concessions from the big-spending Democrats is the equivalent to winning an important battle, but we still must realize that in terms of fighting the entire war, this budget is clearly a big win for Democrats. After all, like I said above, this budget looks nothing like the document that would be created if Ackerman and Villines had Republican majorities behind them, and could craft a budget that reflects the philosophy of freedom and a limited role for government as espoused by the GOP.
Which brings us to the "spin" part of this situation. Today on the FR, we feature a column from Villines, where he is taking the age-old honored approach of praising the budget for which he personally voted. But then, if the budget was really "all that" I suppose it would have garnered the support of virtually all Republicans instead of less than a third of them. With all due respect to Mike Villines, whom I hold in high regard, I believe as the Republican Leader that he should be more genuine in making the case for why this budget is better for the involvement and hard negotiations of Senator Ackerman and himself, but he should be clearly laying out how this budget spends billions more than Republicans would like and contains massive amounts of spending on programs that the GOP simply wouldn’t even fund at all. Let’s remember that just in the area of infrastructure investment alone, the Republican Caucus stood together in solidarity just last year to insist on pay-as-you-go investment from the general fund, which is not in this budget to any significant level. And that is just one example out of dozens of policy areas.
It is important that all Republicans, including those in the Assembly that ‘bit the bullet’ with Villines and voted for the budget as the best possible deal considering the circumstances, decry this budget, and the spending largesse and priorities of Assembly Democrats. After all, if Republicans do not present a contrasting vision for what we would do with a majority, why change? If all of the Democrats and nine Republicans have created such a perfect budget, then perhaps we don’t really need redistricting reform after all.
So, in conclusion, I understand why some GOPers in the Assembly voted for this budget. But clearly this was a close call, and as I said above, we may never really know if the budget could have gotten better if we simply held it up for months or longer. Which brings us to the State Senate. It is my understanding that this deal left the lower house without the Senate Republicans having ‘signed off’ on the deal. We can talk another time about the importance of solidarity, and why perhaps a budget should not pass out of one house before both GOP caucuses have agreed to it.
That said, whether this budget is adopted will now be the subject of much discussion among fifteen Senate Republicans. While technically only two of them would need to vote with the Democrats to pass this spending plan, the Senate GOP caucus took an actual formal vote (which was unanimous) that until a majority of eight Senators agreed to a budget, they would all stick together as a team. Of course, the pressure on them now as a group, and as individuals, is significant. That said, there is no doubt that despite concessions, it’s a bad budget. So Senate Republicans have all of the justification they need to reject this budget, and take everyone back to the negotiating table. Will they do that? Well, we all have a front row seat to find out, as the Senate is scheduled to meet this morning.
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