It is my hope that Republican legislators will apply the same degree of sophistication to their approach on voting on a Big 5-agreed-upon "deal" that those of us on the outside will use to analyze the proposal and the votes on all of its component parts.
First and foremost, since not all FlashReport readers are intimately aware of how these budget votes tend to take place — it is not one bill, but series of bills all tied together that make the budget "package" deal. So what happens is that one bill may lay out modifications to state spending, another bill might contain tax increases, and other bills may contain other miscellaneous parts of the package.
Knowing that a deal is carved up this way is important in analyzing who supports the package — because, and this is critical, for ANY PART of the package to be enacted, it ALL must be enacted. This is the manner in which the Democrats can ensure their any votes they put up for spending CUTS don’t go into effect unless Republicans put up the necessary votes for TAX INCREASES — or visa versa I suppose.
I lay all of this out because it is being reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that a budget "deal" amongst the Big 5 (the Governor and the four legislative leaders) will be announced Monday, with a vote to take place on Tuesday.
I feel very comfortable, as a conservative, having Senator Dave Cogdill and Assemblyman Mike Villines representing our interests in that small group — though it is extremely dysfunctional that in state government, important public policy decisions are vetted out behind closed doors.
Both Cogdill and Villines won their Republican primaries in safe GOP seats after signing written pledges to never raise taxes and to oppose any efforts to do so.
That said, it’s really no secret that both have said that, in theory, there could be enough concessions from the political left to make the case to their respective caucuses that breaking the ‘no new taxes’ pledge is worth it (my words, not theirs). We’ve all read a lot in the paper about permanent spending caps and various adjustments to anti-business policies in the state.
It’s my sincere hope that if Cogdill and Villines are proposing to break their anti-tax pledges, and have the Republican Party toss its most significant plank out the window, that the kinds of reforms we’re looking at are at a more significant level — busting open union labor agreements so that state spending cuts include reductions in the cost of our state’s labor force, ending union arbitration, terminating defined benefit retirement packages, abolishing the state education code, clearing the way to privatize prisons — the kinds of changes that are really impactful, and present the kind of kamakaze votes for the left that they would like to see engaged upon by Republicans who enable a tax increase.
Which brings me to the point of this commentary.
Each Republican legislator should review carefully the proposal before them, and decide if they support it in its entirety (both the give AND the take). Then that GOP legislator should have the courage to do one of two things. Either vote for EVERY aspect of the "deal" (yes, including a tax increase) or vote against EVERY part of it.
In other words, you either like this deal or you don’t.
This becomes critical because while it is a no-brainer that the Democrats will put up ALL of their votes for any tax increases, thus meaning a minimal number of GOP votes would be required, I suspect that the Democrats will have a much harder time putting up votes for extreme spending cuts. Therefore it will take MORE Republican votes to achieve the 2/3rd vote necessary to pass that part of the package.
THIS IS CRITICAL FOR EVERYONE TO GET: IF THE CUTS IN A DEAL THAT INCLUDE TAXES DO NOT PASS, THE TAXES DO NOT GO INTO EFFECT. OR PUT ANOTHER WAY, IN THE CONTEXT OF A BUDGET VOTE, A VOTE FOR THE CUTS IS A VOTE FOR THE TAXES.
So to make this clear, if you like the deal, for for all of it. But if you individually feel that the tax increases proposed are not worth whatever the "get" is for it — then you should vote against every part of the deal – especially proposed cuts in the deal. Remember, there will be language with those cuts that ensure they do NOT GO INTO EFFECT without tax increases.
That pledge that you all signed (well, except Assemblyman Niello) is not just a pledge to oppose new taxes, but a pledge to oppose efforts to raise taxes. Playing a role in passing a deal with a tax increase, whether you vote for that one component part that contains the tax increase language or not, still, in our opinion, violates the pledge. That doesn’t mean you may not decide it’s worth it, in your mind, to break the pledge. But we encourage you to use that calculus as you figure out how to vote on the package.
I have been talking with various organizations that "rate" legislators on their votes — we’re probably going to start a new FlashReport Rating of the Legislature this year. In doing so, we’ll all have to decide if this "deal" on balance was good or bad, and if it includes taxes, whether the changes in the way the state does business that are realized to try a justify them are worth it. If we do a rating, you can be sure that we will score legislators on this as a package. Or to put it this way, if you vote for ANY of the bills in the deal, we would simply tally you as supporting the deal, period. We hope that other pro-taxpayer groups that score votes will do the same.
In closing, since none of us (with the exception of a handful of readers) know what may be on the table, and what is in the alleged deal — so who knows what all of this means? But I have faith in Senator Cogdill and Assemblyman Villines as negotiators. This rumored deal will either be a solution that truly reflects massive overspending-created problems, or — well, I don’t think there will be a deal.
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