Word is that the $500 million for health care for illegal children that the Democrats added to the budget during conference committee has been dropped. Also, yesterday afternoon, Bill Bradley was reporting on his New West blog that the governor has dropped his plans to increase the Healthy Families programs by $23 million (some of this spending would have been used to provide care for illegal immigrant children).
Writers on this website, talk radio hosts and others in the grassroots rightly expressed outrage about the health care spending for illegal immigrants and effectively killed the proposals. Now it is time for the Democrats and the mainstream press to hear the same amount of outrage about the roughly $150 million the Democrats cut from public safety spending Schwarzenegger included in his May Budget Revision. Senator Chuck Poochgian has been especially vocal on this issue, but he needs support from folks inside and outside of the Capitol.
We are now one week past the constitutional deadline that requires the Legislature to pass a state budget for the upcoming fiscal year and just nine days away from when that budget is supposed to go into effect. As I understand it, everyone is banking on the budget to be fully baked by early July because Fabian Nunez has World Cup tickets for July 7-10 (for a mere $25K, you too can join the Speaker, but you have to pony up for the airfare).
How close is the state to having a budget? In years past, this was the time that the “Big Five” began meeting, hammering out the details where the legislative budget conference and the chief executive differ. Not this year. The negotiations are between the top four Legislative leaders (Nunez, Perata, Plescia and Ackerman) with no doubt many phone calls to the Governor’s Office to get a read on where he might be on any contentious issue. (They are probably better off buying a Ouija board than trying to figure that out, staff guidance or not.)
I’m told that the Republicans are working with three guiding principles in this process. These principles are that the state budget should:
#1: Address the structural problems by paying down debt, not increasing spending
#2: Protect public safety
#3: Keep spending in check; not expand or create any major new programs
With the illegal immigrant health care issue off the table, the budget negotiations can focus on these major issues: do we pay down the state’s debt or put money in a “reserve,” as the Democrats propose? Do we strip $150 million away from the cops on the street and district attorneys who are trying to put more criminals away? Do we spend more and create new programs without dealing with the fundamental structural problems in our budget?
Nunez, Perata and their colleagues want to spend more (except on public safety) and not put new revenues towards paying off the state’s debt. Plescia, Ackerman and their caucus members need to stand firm on paying down the debt and holding the line on spending. The Democrats might want to make the unions, the teachers and other special interests happy by expanding their pet programs, but the Republicans need to be the grown-ups in the room and just say no.
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