Wednesday.
The Senators were in earlier, looking at a new proposal to try to settle up the budget, to be heard in their next session tomorrow, so that the Dems get 24 hours of review.
This is a first in my five years. Usually a package is sent over to us in the Assembly to either put out, or agonize over for a few more weeks. This time around the lower house got one out first.
I’ve an idea of issuing legislators special calendars for all their offices, homes and Crackberry phones that have April and May ripped out of them so that, at the end of March, June comes up on the legislative budget radar and a renewed urgency sets in. Then, when we go until the end of ‘our July’ we’re actually 15 days early toward making the true Constitutional deadline of June 15. I’m sure the rest of
Last week’s Assembly budget result, passed in the wee hours in a hurry once again, with all the quality control that comes with that environment, obviously hasn’t been met with much enthusiasm over in the Senate. Dems hate tax incentives, Reps hate the fact that it doesn’t balance without all the gimmicks and assumptions.
With only 9 Rep votes on the Assembly side, it really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that it got held up in the Senate. This was to be our ‘get tough year.’ There is no ‘election-year budget’ excuse to cause a ‘let’s get out of town’ attitude for any Republicans. Those members that want the term limit extension initiative to pass really want out of town.
We are long due to exercise the fiscal discipline to truly balance a budget on its own. We have some harsh fiscal realities to face in the future and by not dealing with them at this most-opportune time, we heap these problems upon our children. Unforeseen economic downturns, new bond debt payments kicking in [on stuff the state shouldn’t be dabbling in to begin with], pension/public health plan icebergs on the horizon, a structural deficit that still hasn’t gone away. All this on the heels of tremendous growth in revenues to the state the last couple of years. Huge surpluses. And still a structural deficit, one projected to balloon in the 08-09 fiscal year to about $5.4 billion, as much as $7B according to some. That budget will be a real peach in my final year in the Assembly. I can already hear the hue and cry from liberals for increasing taxes on every sector of productivity in our state.
Makes one contemplate even more, What is the proper role of government anyway? How do we pay for such grand ideas? Can these things be done better by the private sector? And, should we even be doing them at all?
When Republicans who know what they believe and why they believe it ponder those questions, it becomes pretty easy to come up with ideas on how to balance a budget and even run a surplus. Then reality hits…we’re not in a vacuum. Democrats believe different things than we do, probably with good intentions – most of them. And they outnumber Republicans in that building 73-47. They have for a long time. That explains a lot about
47 is a key number in the discussion. Not just my age now, but the fact that there are 47 Republican legislators that say they want to strive for the same things. But a funny thing happens on the way to legislative bliss. When communication between the Reps of both houses, for whatever reason, is poor, we see budgets like this.
Yes we have a bicameral system of government in the legislature, but when we are in the minority as Reps are, we need to have a strong unicameral thought process and strategy as Republican Senators and Assemblymembers, working together. Republican members in one house being frustrated or angry with what the Reps in the other house [this goes either way] have sent over in a budget document just says to me that we aren’t fighting so smart, at least as to our potential.
The tax incentive plan was only agreed on in the Assembly. Now, ‘The Don,’ Senate Pro Tem Perata can stop it because he didn’t agree to it. Republicans love the supply side. Any chance to cut taxes and incentivise growth, we’re on it. However, any Rep that voted for the imbalanced budget with the tax incentives as a sweetener did so at their own peril…drafting error in the rush to vote it out, or not.
In my first year in the Assembly, 2003, there was an agreement on sweeteners to that Assembly budget, good items intended toward good government, and several Republicans ended up voting for the budget because of them. But that was agreed to only by Speaker Wesson. That budget bill had already been sent over from the Senate for our concurrence and, Senate Pro Tem John Burton said something like “#@#&*%# no!” to those pieces and adjourned for the summer. Those Republican members, and
Expansion of government and spending is the real root problem. “It’s not a revenue problem, it’s a spending problem” may be a phrase that has become tiresome, but it still rings true. Democrats want to increase spending, and have had their way with it. Republicans seek, as the minority, to control it. If you believe at all in private enterprise and markets, then who do you tax to increase revenue? The “wealthiest Californians?” Big Companies? Employers? Families?
Time and again we see, those that can, when taxed disproportionately, vote with their feet. They take their jobs and investment elsewhere. The ones that can’t/won’t move are left with an ever crushing burden to fund a growing government and a lower income, lesser skilled, even illegal underground, population that doesn’t sustain itself…even if there were a compulsory $10.00 or higher minimum wage.
With all these factors I’ve mentioned, and more, it seems to me that this is the year to get it right. With the funnel clouds of future budgets swirling – not fixing these problems now virtually guarantees a future of deafening drumbeats for higher taxes, and the resulting downward economic spiral of investment leaving our state.