California’s Democrat legislators must be salivating. To be so close to redistributing another roughly $1400 per family straight out of their budgets and into the state budget must be tantalizing to them – because, as everyone knows, politicians in Sacramento know how best to spend the money earned by working Californians, right? Never mind that we are in the middle of very difficult economic times, when raising taxes by this massive amount with be the deciding factor on why some California businesses close, why jobs are lost, why houses go into foreclosure, and more.
Fortunately for California taxpayers, Republican lawmakers get it. They understand that there is never a good time to raise taxes, and that there are certainly worse times to do so – and this is one of those times. The drive that Democrat lawmakers, and Governor Schwarzenegger, and a handful of GOPers have to pass this Big 5/Big Taxes budget plan that notoriously contains over $14 billion in new taxes on cars and car registrations, as well as sales and income taxes is amazing.
Last night, as he adjourned the State Senate until 10am this morning, State Senate President Darrell Steinberg told his colleagues to “bring their toothbrushes” as he literally planned on “locking in” legislators in the Senate Chambers until there is a budget deal. When I heard that, the first thought that came through my mind was, “How immature.”
The reality of this situation is painful for Democrats or our friends in the main stream media to really swallow. But to remind all of our readers – the state of California is on the brink of the financial abyss because of years of chronic overspending, through the adoption year-after-year of Democrat budgets (that have gotten some minor tweaks by some peripheral and last minute GOP influence) that spent way too much. We have seen an explosion of state spending, upwards of 40% since Governor Schwarzenegger came into office (the “post-partisan” Governor signed all of these big, bloated budgets). During this period of overspending, almost like voices in the wilderness due to the willingness of Democrat legislators, aided by the Governor, to exclude them from a meaningful role in a normal, open budget process, legislative Republicans in the State Senate and the State Assembly put forth warning after warning about the profligate spending, and have and continue to offer up a bevy of solutions to get the state back on track (not that our friends in the main stream media choose to spend much time highlighting solutions offered by Republicans).
So now here we are – because of a flawed budget process, that now pushes all of the meaningful policy discussions into a small room with only five players, the Governor and the four legislative leaders – we end up with a proposal that, frankly, is terrible. So much pressure builds up to find a solution, any solution, that finally Republicans in the Big 5, Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, waved the white flag, declaring that the deal before legislators right now was the best that they could negotiate. You know what, they are probably right. I don’t think that the liberal Democrats that have run up this massive deficit are willing to settle for anything less than massive overtaxing to feed their massive overspending habit.
The reason why the Big 5/Big Taxes budget has not been adopted is really simple. The Big 5 “best they could do” final product just isn’t good enough. When you have a dynamic where Democrats put into that negotiation two liberal ideologues who probably, if they could pen their own solution, would simply hike taxes by $42 billion and call it a day, and then add to it a “Republican” Governor who ran for office on an emphatic no-new-taxes pledge, twice, and then summarily dumped that pledge in the name of “post-partisanship” – exactly how well would you expect taxfighters Cogdill and Villines to fare? There is a saying – “garbage in, garbage out.” This was a predictable outcome of a flawed Big 5, back room process.
So what now?
First and foremost, we need to extricate our legislators from “immature-land” – where a budget is expected to be produced by physically restraining legislators with the implication that their positions on the most significant public policy dilemma that they will likely see in their entire tenure in the legislature will be arrived at through forced negotiations, threats, sleep deprivation and other unsavory tactics? No, the first thing that needs to happen is that legislators need to step back from this flawed process.
Because there is such an immediate crisis, the next step should be to approve those immediate cuts and downsizing proposals that both Democrats and Republicans agree need to be part of a solution. This will be very helpful – it will demonstrate bipartisanship, and also send an important message to Californians that legislators acknowledge that this situation was created by overspending, and the very first step in resolving it is significant reductions in state spending.
Then we need to “un break” the budget negotiation system by empowering our legislators to roll up their sleeves and actually work through more solutions. Of course, in order to do this effectively, this would mean structuring the budget panels so that the same two-thirds vote that is required to pass the final document also be required in each budget subcommittee – so that contentious issues are resolved sooner, rather than later.
It is said that reducing the size of government is a lot harder than growing it – clearly this is the case. But it is also clear that is exactly what needs to happen here. The biggest impediment to this is a Democrat legislative majority made up of a mix of union-elected tools who will not cross the political interests that placed them into office, and left-wing ideologues to whom the kind of cuts we are talking about are actually, to them, the moral equivalent to heresy – and, of course, a Governor who seems committed to a tax-the-people-more solution.
The great balance to those in the Capitol committed to taxing their way out of this problem is the laws of economics. There comes a point where you just can’t keep increasing the cost of government – eventually the rate of return on those increased taxes diminishes as the higher taxes cause more frigidity in the marketplace, and people adjust their behavior to spend less. This is exacerbated by tougher economic times. Of course, there is also the increasing flow of companies and jobs to other nearby states where tax rates are significantly lower – with the departure of those companies and jobs goes revenues that would have been available to state and local government. Republican legislators get this, and that is why they have said no to increasing taxes on Californians, who, by the way, are already amongst the highest taxed people in the United States. If the taxes in the Big 5/Big Taxes proposal were adopted, we would have the dubious distinction of have the highest taxes in the union.
All of this having been said, I want to close by expressing appreciation to Republican legislators in the State Senate, and in the State Assembly, who oppose not only this particular plan with its $14+ billion in higher taxes, but who also oppose the insulting process being pushed on them by Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass – locking up grown adults in the legislative chambers like they are four-year-olds. You are doing the right thing for California, and while at times you each may feel like you are fighting an uphill battle, especially with the bias of so many reporters (this outrageous “news” story is the egregious example of the day) and being flooded by the “costumers” of government while at the same time feeling perhaps taken for granted by normal taxpayers who are too busy working to be phoning, calling or visiting you – rest assured you are doing the right thing. Stand tall!
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