The following is a Guest Commentary just received from Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform… 

Your Governor can beat up Sarah Palin, but Sarah Palin is smarter than your Governor

By Grover Norquist

Only 6 months into the new fiscal year, the Democrats in the California State legislature have spent $11 billion more next year than they had planned to take from taxpayers. This, Governor Schwarzenegger explains is our problem.  We have failed to pony up the $11 billion.

In fact, this is the state legislature’s own problem. They are spending too much.

We just had a presidential election where the greatest indictment of the incumbent was that he was spending too much of other people’s money.  Some he was spending here. Some he was spending overseas.  All of it he was spending.

It is the Spending, stupid.  And in many cases, it is the stupid spending.

Politicians have two choices.  They can govern; which means setting priorities, deciding that some things are more important than others and that some projects can wait while others move forward.  Or they can simply loot the peasants to pay for the present mess.  

The governor’s and Democrat legislators’ most recent helpful suggestions as to how to pluck the goose—higher sales taxes, sales taxes on services, extraction taxes to raise the cost of energy—is another effort to avoid governing.

Governor: Stop raising taxes. Govern.  Make decisions. End programs that don’t work. End spending that is counter-productive.  Don’t spend more on new ideas while you haven’t even looked at fixing old problems. The long term solution to California’s fiscal problems lies in a spending cap such as the one proposed by Senator Dave Cogdill and Assemblyman Mike Villines.

There is one test as to whether a politician is even semi-serious about governing vs. being considered a tax-and-spender. California is behind the national trend to require complete financial transparency.  In Texas and Missouri, the state government posts all state contracts and all state spending.  Missouri’s website has had 13 million hits in the past year.  Kansas and Oklahoma have such websites enacted by the legislature.  Washington, Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and several others have passed laws requiring transparency.

In California: nada.  No transparency.  No effort to let citizens see exactly how their money is being spent.  Just what do they know about their spending that they do not want you to know?

Senator Tom McClintock and Assemblyman Martin Garrick introduced transparency legislation last session that would have begun this process.  I encourage the legislature to reintroduce, and pass this legislation during the special session. Ask your legislator if they will co-sponsor and vote for such a bill. 

Or Schwarzenegger could “Just Do It.” He could follow in the footsteps of the one governor with higher name ID than his: Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin who implemented fiscal transparency though an executive order.
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Grover Norquist is the President of Americans for Tax Reform.  Americans for Tax Reform has created the Center for Fiscal Accountability as a project dedicated to increasing transparency and accountability in government finance. For more information, please visit www.fiscalaccountability.org.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.