We’ve intercepted an e-mail sent from the Blackberry of Senate President Darrell Steinberg to the Blackberry of Speaker Karen Bass…  From reading it, it’s clear that lack of unity among Republicans in the capitol is helping his cause of ultimately raising taxes….

DATE: 6/27/09  13:57
TO: superbass@unionforever.com
FROM:  icutmypayhaveyou@healthcareforeverykid.com
RE:  Our Unlikely Ally in Sam Blakeslee

Karen — Divided Republicans mean "opportunity knocks" for us.  I know that the union chiefs keep calling us — but there is hope that we can get some reductions passed in next few days, and buy some time so that we can avoid making the kind of draconian cuts that would be required to get us through the whole fiscal year — as we both know, we have to buy some time because we have to raise taxes, and perhaps in a few weeks or months we can get that done. 

As you know I was really worried about the Governor and all of the legislative Republicans working together — all of them digging in their heels insisting that we make all of the cuts (including the ones you and I call "dire").  But clearly Sam Blakeslee has moved his focus.  He keeps using the bipartisan rhetoric — which is fine by me because he’s playing into our hands.  And he is making a great case for stop-gap funding! 

If we can get just a few billion in cuts and financial shell games through by mid-week — I figure we’ll by okay until August if we push it.  That’s a couple more months of avoiding the "dire" cuts — and a couple of months further from that May election, so we can get some support built up for the oil severance and other taxes we need.

Actually, if we we can move out our "deadline" as far as I think by passing these 08-09 education cuts and the other bills — we’ll actually completely offset the cuts by what we avoid having to cut anything else until the end of the summer (and if we get some taxes…?)…

The most important thing here, Karen, is that we as Democrats must continue to talk with one voice, which is that we need to pass some smaller measures upon which we can all agree, approaching the shortfall piecemeal.  If we can get passed the summer this way, and then refuse to support any more cuts without some new revenues — we’ll be in a much stronger position.  Thank goodness Republicans are divided.  Frankly, Karen, we are at our weakest point right now.  It only gets better for us.

See if you can continue to talk to Blakeslee and encourage him.  Frankly, as long as Assembly Republicans are making the case for piece-meal reform instead of reading off the play sheet of needing enough cuts to balance the budget for the whole year — it is very useful to us.

That said, if we can’t get something passed in the next few days, we may have to start talking about terms of surrender.  We can’t let the state start issuing IOU’s.  And the Governor is being a total ass and I think he’s serious about another furlough day (can’t someone talk to Maria?).

[OK, this is fictitious.  But it makes an important point.  Republicans need to work together, and we need to stop talking about piece-meal cuts.  I get it that there are some opportunities lost if we end the fiscal year without getting a comprehensive package.  We just need to blame that missed opportunity on the Democrats, because we cannot afford to give them even a day of breathing room, let alone the rest of the summer!]

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.