History. That is the secret to the budget solution in this case. It is a real simple solution. A difficult one politically, but simple in its explanation.
This is how it is done. First, get a reasonable estimate of the revenue. Second, find the last budget year in which that amount of revenue was received by the state. Next, find the budget from that year, and go through it line item by line item. Finally, set the budget amounts of each line item this year at that year’s level. That is the solution. There can be variations on that theme. The money from line items that are eliminated or reduced because those items are not that important can be added to other items so that the hit on those items is not as great, but the baseline can be that year.
Here is the good news. I haven’t done the research, but I can just about guarantee that the year in which the baseline can be set will be one of the last three years. Look at budget year 2005-06, or 06-07, or even 07-08, the year is one of those three. Wind back the hands of time. The world didn’t collapse because of spending levels in those years, people could understand and remember state services in those years. They will know that winding back to those years would be easy and relatively painless. They also know it would solve the problem. It is good policy and it is good politics.
Of course, it would require that the public employee unions renegotiate their contracts. It would require that state supervisors get cuts in their pay back to three years ago, but that is exactly what happens in the private sector when things go bad. It can happen in government too. It is not that hard to do mathematically, and it is not that hard to sell politically to the general public. The only ones who will not buy into it easily are the people who created this problem, that is, the government union bosses whose craven pursuit of your money has driven this state to the brink of ruin.
No new taxes are necessary. The only thing that it needs is a backbone, a political will to weather the Sacramento storm that will result from such a proposal. That data is easy to come by. Anyone can get that data off of the Internet. The explanation will be easy, and easily understood. It is worth the discussion.