If anyone wants to share with us what is in the water that Republican State Senator Roy Ashburn is drinking these days, please share it with us. For years now, a longtime FR friend (with a healthy dislike of the “Bill Thomas Machine” in the greater Kern County area), Ashburn has been a reliable conservative in the legislature, and a team player.
Lately, however, he seems to have “senioritis” – and this ailment is causing him to act in a peculiar and most unfortunate manner. Right now, more so than at any point than I can recollect, legislative Republicans have unified around a common line in the sand – that our state’s fiscal woes have been directly caused by year after year of massive spending increases (40% growth in less than 4 years) – and that California taxpayers should not be punished by the legislature’s overspending with the imposition of new or higher taxes.
Only one Republican legislator that I know of (out of nearly fifty) has made open noises about supporting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “capitulation budget” (as we call it) which on the paramount issue of our day, whether to increases taxes, is a terrible plan. You see, the Governor’s proposal increases by BILLIONS of dollars the state sales tax. The Governor is quick to add, “But wait, it is actually a tax CUT because there is one cent increase in the sales tax for just a few years, and then he proposes that the sales tax rate drop to a quarter-cent below its current rate.”
Not one Republican to whom I have spoken believes for a minute that a massive multi-year increase in the state sales tax is a good idea, or that it isn’t actually an increase. Well, except for Roy Ashburn, who went onto the radio and said that it might not be properly characterized as tax increase, since the rate eventually drops to lower than today. I also haven’t found a single Republican who actually thinks that this “temporary” tax increase, set to go on well into the term of the next Governor, won’t become permanent.
Senator Ashburn has decided to go “maverick” on us (perhaps inspired by John McCain – although McCain would never support the Governor’s tax increase). He won’t stand with his Republican colleagues against the Governor’s “capitulation budget” – he wouldn’t vote for the GOP “No New Taxes” budget – heck, he has now started to skip meetings of the Senate Republican Caucus all together.
There may not be as much individual notoriety for Ashburn, who is termed out of the state legislation in 2010, if he stands together with his Republican colleagues, as part of a group effort. But the payoff for Ashburn’s political party, and for the people of California, in Republicans standing together to ensure that our state’s overspending problem is solved by spending cuts, and not with tax increases, is great.
So at the end of the day, Senator Ashburn will have to decide whether he wants the biography of his time in the legislature to be about his heroic participation, with his GOP colleagues, in forcing “spend-a-holic” Democrats to make real cuts in state government, or if he is going to go to “the dark side” and support a plan with a tax increase, and end up being added to a list of nefarious Republican turncoats like Doris Allen, Paul Horcher, Brian Setencich, Maurice Johannesson, Mike Briggs, and their ilk – Republicans remembered for growing state government.
Ashburn doesn’t deserve to be in that group – for a long time he has championed taxpayers. Some have said that Ashburn’s flirtation with “the dark side” has, as its root cause, frustration at the internal political of Senate Republicans, and his removal from the powerful Rules Committee perch which he held under Dick Ackerman’s leadership – still others have said he is trying to pave a path to a next career with his last election to the Senate being in his rear view mirror. I couldn’t attest to any of this – but I can tell you that the threat of Ashburn casting a pro-tax vote at this critical time is very real, very incomprehensible, and very unfortunate.
I’m not saying that the ultimate budget solution will be a great one for California — there are too many liberals that have to sign off on a budget to make that feasible — but the best possible budget will come through GOP solidarity, and budget negotiations that take place through our Republican legislative leadership. By acting as if he is a Party of One, Roy Ashburn will ensure that the best possible budget remains out of reach.
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