Credibility is really important in our elected officials. After all, when they run for election (or re-election) much weight is placed on what they tell us they will do in office. I must tell you, as someone who endorsed, supported and encouraged others to do the same for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recall election of 2003, and his re-election in 2006, I am starting to feel like a chump. It’s not that I am mad at him, it’s more like I am hurt. I feel like he made a promise to all of us, and now he’s not keeping his word.
Arnold’s embrace of a large tax increase as part of a big state-government foray into the healthcare marketplace the size of which would make Milton Friedman cry was so unbelievable that I still am in shock. Worse yet was the ‘justification’ used — that raising actual taxes is somehow netted out by a reduction in a so-called "hidden tax" that Californians already pay. Combine that terrible method of justification with any liberal spending program and I guess you can justify tax hikes all day long. But it doesn’t make it right, and this is not the policy agenda of a fiscally conservative Governor.
Now we look at this state budget stand-off, where the Governor has had a chance to bring everyone together to resolve issues, instead he has been attacking State Senators from our own party. Instead of using his constitutional power to call of the legislators back from their vacations to come up with a budget that is balanced, and makes a few more (modest) programmatic changes to better prepare us for out-year deficits, he is acting as an agent of the very same special interests that he vowed to "sweep out" of the State Capitol during the recall election.
Since the theme of this column is credibility, let’s go to the assertions that I am hearing that the Governor isn’t "bashing" Republican Senators at all (as he travels around the state, using innocent victims of the budget stalemate as political props in the districts of GOP Senators — disingenuous when he knows that Republicans have proposed a $10 billion authorization to pay these folks during the impasse). I guess the best way to point how disingenuous the Governor is being would be to make an analogy. Imagine back in 1987, when then President Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where he attacked socialism, and then proudly proclaimed, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Well, imagine if Reagan had given the same speech in the same spot, but didn’t mention the Soviet Union, or Gorbachev by name. And then imagine Reagan says to the press after the speech, "Hey, I wasn’t bashing the Soviets, or Gorbachev." Not to credible, huh?
To add to the growing "credibility issue" that the Governor is creating is an amazing fact revealed by State Senator Tom McClintock in two columns today, one in the Sacramento Bee, the other in the Modesto Bee. In both columns, both centered around the budget debate, McClintock details that of the $700 million in proposed line-item vetoes that the Governor has been saying he will make to, as he says, balance the budget, he proposes that $160,000,000 in Medi-Cal payments due to be paid next June, the last month of this fiscal year, and instead paying them in July. McClintock rightly makes this analogous to making your December mortgage payment in January for a big year-end "savings." The Senator calls this gimmick, and it sure sounds like one to me.
So I can only hope that the Governor will pause, take stock of this situation, and reevaluate the way that he is handling this budget situation. Not only is it not helping to resolve budget negotiations, but his choices are eroding his credibility, which will have longer-term consequences than the current impasse. These are all choices the Governor makes, and I humbly suggest it is time to make different ones.
I have had a lot of verbal and e-mail dialogues with those who, like me, worked hard to elect and re-elect this Governor. None of these conversations have ended on a happy note.
But today is a new day, and I know that this Governor has it in him to change his tactics, and bring everyone together to craft a budget that can meet the constitutional two-thirds requirements in both chambers. But that starts by using carrots, not sticks, with your own party’s legislators. And, of course, it requires credibility.
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