Update: Floor session on the Assembly side has just started debate a few minutes ago, with Speaker Bass up first, I pray for the best from tonights effort.
As the legislatures caucuses finish huddling right now, no doubt very heated huddles as all sorts of rumors and speculation fly, the effect of tonights proposals actually passing seem to create a rather bizarre circumstance that will likely manifest itself in a 2009 special election.
The 2005 special, which was painted and treated as a "very unpopular" one by the press and even by many that would normally seek some of the reforms that were contained in it…and then drew an apology after its demise by the Governor for calling it, could prove as a harbinger for a 2009 version.
The budget spending limit concept we have sought as Republicans is finally moving forward to a vote barring a last minute blow up of some sort. We have a chance at what we asked for as Republicans, right? If we just compromise on taxes, we can get the spending limit we ask for…or do we.
You may recall the large amount of dollars and rhetoric thrown against a budget reform, known as Prop 76, on the 2005 ballot and who spent those dollars against it, a milder form of a spending limit that allowed for a limit on year over year budget growth and also limiting gimmickry of borrowing from other special funds for general fund expenditures as well as other emergency budget provisions.
You will find many of the same suspects lining up against the spending limit that may be a product of tonights [tomorrow mornings?] legislative efforts, [contained in approximately 26 bill proposals on the file for tonight last I hear] They succeeded in 2005 in scaring, confusing, or convincing voters to reject reform then and will line up against them this time as well.
The bizarre twist is how the tax proposals will play against passing the limit too.
New taxes will happen as a result of passing tonights proposals. Along with the spending limit proposition, voters will be being asked to vote to extend the length of time of the new taxes that come from tonights legislation. So then, with all the usual opposition to fiscal restraint that would come up against the spending limit on the ballot, we would then also have the pro-taxpayer organizations that rightly cannot stomach the new and higher taxes, no matter what the tradeoff. You would even see newly created "shell" tax groups that would masquerade as being taxpayer friendly while doing the dirty work of, again, those opposed to limiting state spending, adding an even greater weight to the effort to pass a spending limit on the ballot later this year.
Result: 2 years or so of "temporary tax increases" for sure and a high hurdle and long odds to get the spending limit passed. Voters are faced with lengthening the temporary tax burden to up to 5 years by passing the limit! The pro-taxers are paid off once again and odds are with them stopping spending limits.
No doubt the pressure is high to "do something, even if it’s wrong" in this budget debate. Some of my old Republican colleagues genuinely believe that everything has been done that can be done. But, we now have the attention of everyone on this perenial budget problem, like never before. We have the ire of most people I talk to that the new pork being pushed in DC is ludicrous, and people tell me that the new taxes coming from Sacramento make them just as mystified as to how that is a solution to the problems of their small businesses and households. They ask why aren’t reforms to the crushing regulations front and center in debate instead of greater burdens?
Instead, the spending limit should be passed first as a stand alone item, without all the additional election hurdles of new taxes being foisted on reform minded voters. New taxes can and always are proposed as an option, the reforms Republicans have sought get few chances at the light of day. Until reforms do succeed in coming to pass, we ought not burden the economy and working Californians with another lead life-ring of taxes…and also undermine the election effort that would enact budget reform by linking it to longer term taxes.