In this battle against growth in government, Republican legislators must stick together and be a team. When I say Republican legislators, I mean both Senators and Assemblymembers. There is strength in unity — and this budget battle is one where, working together, we can end up with a budget that does not raise taxes, ultimately ensures that taxpaying Californians are not penalized for the overspending ways of liberal politicians.
I have heard that Senate President Pro-Tem Don is contemplating bringing up the Governor’s so-called "compromise" plan (we prefer to call it the surrender-to-more-taxes plan) for a vote as early as today.
Here are some guidelines that we here at the FlashReport think would be good ones for our Republican legislators…
- No Republican votes should go up on any budget until that document has been vetting by both the Senate and Assembly Republican Caucuses, and that there is agreement that both caucuses can support a particular budget. Nothing could be worse, this particular season, than one chamber "jamming" the other with a bad budget.
- No Republican votes should go up on any budget that seeks to expand state government by increasing taxes, such as the Governor’s proposals to raise the sales tax, slash the ability of businesses to write off losses, and impose a statewide property tax to fight fires. (For the record, we assume that the GOP "No New Taxes" budget contains no new taxes.)
- No Republican votes should go up on any budget that seeks to "borrow" money intended to go to local governments — which would in turn create pressure for them to try to raise taxes locally (if there is borrowing in the no taxes plan, that borrowing should be replaced with additional cuts ASAP).
- No Republican legislator should undercut the leadership in their respective caucus by doing side-bar negotiations with the Governor or Democrats that are not expressly condoned by leadership. We are going to get our best budget if GOPers act like a team.
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