You have to love the mindset of liberal Democrats like Don Perata, the outgoing State Senate President Pro-Tem. For years and years, they (Democrats) have overseen a huge expansion of the size and scope of state government spending, without regard for the inevitable result — that eventually the proverbial chickens would come home to roost and we would be left where we are right now — with current state spending vastly exceeding anticipated tax revenues.
This situation that we are in, which is mostly the doing of Perata and his liberal Democrat colleagues (since it takes a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, Republicans to share some "partial credit" for our situation), is a horrible one. But it should be crystal clear that there is only one responsible course of action to an overspending problem, and that is to cut spending back to levels that the state can afford.
Of course, being liberals, Perata and company can’t understand why we should simply saddle Californian’s with higher taxes so that we can "increase state revenue" to match our overspending.
It must be so easy to be a liberal. After all, you are freed up from notions such as "individual liberty" — "limited government" – "freedom" — instead Democrats who want to take America (and in this case California) down the road towards socialism are quite content calling for a higher tax burden here in the Golden State (where taxes are already dangerously high).
In fact, as the spending went up and up, I am sure that many conversation have taken place amongst liberal leaders, chuckling that their very overspending would increase the pressure to increase taxes.
Fortunately Republicans in Sacramento see through this defeated spend-then-tax scheme, and have made it clear that new or higher taxes are off of the table. They have made it clear that an over-spending problem must be resolved by spending cuts, not by punishing working Californians.
Last Summer, Perata and others berated Senate Republicans for holding out for a more fiscally prudent budget. As it turns out, the demands of Senate Republicans fell billions of dollars short of where we needed to be… That said, now Perata is threatening his own budget stalemate, telling the L.A. Times,
"We are not going to be going anywhere this summer," he said, referring to the annual process of trying to agree on a budget by the July 1 start of the new fiscal year. "I told everybody that wants to go to the Democratic [National] Convention . . . TiVo it. That is as close as you are going to get."
(Read the LA Times story here.)
The DNC Convention is in late August.
Well, I have spoken to many GOP legislators on this topic, and if Democrats want to prolong the budget process until they get Republicans to vote for tax increases, then the stalemate will likely go all of the way to the November election. There is no support, at all, for tax increases.
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