Now that California finally has a budget, legislators are free to take on more pressing issues facing the state, right? With the economic downturn, state legislators should be getting to work undoing years of over-regulation that is hurting the economy — starting with the repeal of A.B. 32.

But the legislature is NOT focused forward — Democrats are still focused backwards on the now-done budget deal.

Legislative Democrats are now claiming the Governor had no legal grounds for making additional cuts to balance the unfinished budget the legislature sent him. They are calling for legal action to have his vetoes overturned and the cuts reinstated, which of course would re-create a huge deficit and further flush our economy down the toilet. It never ceases to amaze me how disconnected and oblivious the Democratic politicians in this state are, and this is the most recent example.

The Democrats in the legislature had three months to come up with a sensible budget solution, but instead spent their time stalling to attempt to pass massive tax hikes on working Californians. Luckily, the Republicans and the Governor chose to take a lesson from the massive failure of the May special election and stood strong, proposing sensible solutions to solve the state's $24 billion deficit.

When it was all said and done taxes were not part of the package, but the Democrats refused to pass HUTA and offshore oil drilling, leaving the Governor holding the bag with a budget that was massively short of balancing the books .

Because the Democrat-controlled legislature failed to send the Governor a balanced budget, he had no choice but to use his blue pencil to bring it into balance and include a prudent and necessary reserve. Facing a huge deficit and an uncertain economic future, this was absolutely the responsible move, but unsurprisingly the Democrats refuse to let fiscal discipline battle its way into a system they control and are now creating this havoc that will probably be decided in the courts, costing the state even more.

I don't understand why the Democrats are so focused on restoring these cuts and dragging out this budget battle when they already had their chance. This is just the latest example of how out of touch the Democratic majority is in our. state and how beholden they are to the powerful unions. They are simply putting on a show to demonstrate their alliegence to their failed liberal ideology by picking a fight to prolong the budget battle all so they can unbalance the budget that the Governor balanced.

Of course it is worthy of note that the Democrats have still put forward no list of what they would have cut had it been them with the veto pen.

Typical Democrats – talk big so unions think you're strong and to the rest of the public say, “don't worry about the details – we want to fight over the budget some more.”

And as for the legal argument, try to follow me here…it's very complicated. The governor is the governor, and the governor has the constitutional authority to veto. Wow, thank me later for the enlightenment.

Californians are sick and tired of hearing about the budget and would like to see our politicians focus on other things like, I don't know, the rest of the issues facing this state. Maybe try to fix water infrastructure before our farmers lose their livelihoods, or how about prisons that a federal court has just ordered to reduce its population by nearly 40,000 inmates? The list goes on and on – each issue important to the lives of all Californians.

It's time for the Democrats to understand this, stop playing these ridiculous political games, and get back to work!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.