From John Fund of the Wall Street Journal:
I feel like I am watching a split screen – and both are depicting horror movies in public policy.
As I write, one screen shows our lawmakers in Congress rushing a gigantic spending bill through so quickly that Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg admitted that none of his colleagues would be able to read a final version before they vote on it. Lobbyists with goodies in the bill had copies of the bill yesterday, even before lawmakers did.
The second screen I am watching is one focused on my home state of California. There “Five Men In A Room,” the state’s governor and four legislative leaders have been meeting in secret to craft an enormous set of tax increases. As columnist Dan Walters wrote in today’s Sacramento Bee: “While the public and media were kept in the dark, those involved remained in touch with interest group lobbyists, sometimes stepping out of negotiations to confer via cell phone.”
Regardless of whether you view this behind-closed-doors budget package is a thoughtless validation of previous spending excesses or the only alternative possible in our polarized political climate, is this any way to govern a great state of 38 million people? It reminds me more of the strong-arm tactics used by political machines back East that were rejected by the Californians who moved here a century ago and, under Governor Hiram Johnson, enacted some of the finest “sunshine” and government accountability provisions ever made law. It is disturbing to see GOP legislative leaders such as Mike Villines and Dave Cogdill complicit in crafting this set of backroom deals.
Forty years ago, Curt Gentry wrote a novel called “The Last Days of the late, Great State of California.” It was recognized then as a science-fiction fantasy. But the state’s recent problems make it a plausible epitaph. I hope that when this budget abomination is debated in the legislature in the next day or so, someone asks if this budget deal might just represent a milestone on the road that will make the title of Curt Gentry’s novel a reality.