Earlier today Governor Schwarzenegger held a press conference, blasting state legislators for not resolving the budget crisis.  We’re on our way to "fiscal armageddon" he said, announcing that the state’s fiscal hole is getting deeper by about $40 million each and every day that goes by without a resolution.  Yeah, we get that.

But the Governor is living in a very simplistic world if he thinks that, from his first floor conference room, he can blast away indiscriminately at "the legislature" and expect that this is going to resolve the substantial differences that divide Democrats who want to raise taxes, and Republicans who — don’t, and won’t.

Frankly, I don’t see where the Governor is really accomplishing much of anything.  He was clearly elected with a mandate from the voters to oppose new taxes, and yet has thrown that to the wind as he has developed some sort of "Solomon like" simplistic view of resolving the state’s fiscal woes — "let’s figure out the level of the program and cut half of it, and raise taxes for the other half."

No thank you.

Governor, if you want to help resolve this issue — be the Republican you were elected to be.  Stand with your Republican colleagues and insist that it is time to significant cut state spending.  Nothing as modest as we had last summer, where we actually increased state spending by a half-percent and yet tried to label it as a cut.  We’re talking real, substantial cuts.  Why don’t we just reduce all levels of state spending to what it was say four years ago?

Ultimately, the Governor’s role in these budget negotiations is severely curtailed by his own choice to be a "party of one" — and abandon his Republican colleagues.  Instead of unveiling "count down" calendars, the Governor should be figuring out what we be required by the legislature, and the voters, to just roll back spending levels to match our state income.

For the Governor to propose and advocate tax increases (billions of dollars worth) is so hypocritical of the candidate that I supported both in 2003 and 2006 — and, frankly, makes me really not care much about his opinion in this matter.

The reality is, if I may use a bit of hyperbole, the S.S. California has a hole in the bottom of her, and is leaking out money like nobody’s business.   It’s nice that the Governor wants to pour more water into the ship, but Republicans (and appropriately so) are saying — we aren’t going to work to bring up the water levels in the boat until we plug the hole.  In this comparison, the hole in the bottom of the boat represents the gross overspending that has taken place year after year.  Plugging that hole would be a permanent spending cap, approved by the voters.

Governor, if you want to increase the likelihood of helping to resolve our fiscal woes, then step up to the plate with your GOP brethren and make it clear to the Democrats that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.  Until you do that, you are a "man with no country" and are extraneous to this process.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.