BUDGET UPDATE Friday, 5:00 pm So far, ALL SENATE REPUBLICANS ARE HOLDING FIRM. The budget bill (SB 77) is two votes short of passage. The Democrats are holding the roll open indefinitely in hopes of pressuring passage and have “locked down” the Senate, meaning that it may be in session all night – Democrats seem to have a penchant for that. PLEASE KEEP THE PHONE CALLS AND E-MAILS COMING TO SENATE REPUBLICANS THEIR OFFICES SHOULD BE OPEN AS LONG AS THE BUDGET BILL IS PENDING. YOU’RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE AND NOW IS THE TIME TO POUR IT ON. Below is the speech I just gave on the Senate Floor Mr. President: A year ago, this legislature adopted a budget that ran up the biggest general fund deficit in California’s history. The architects of this budget admit to adding another half billion dollars to the cumulative shortfall, and expect that this looks good in comparison. There are two problems. First, by their own numbers, this budget sets in motion a deficit next year of between $5 ½ billion to $7 billion (depending on how you account for reserves). That means the five-year… Read More

The Federal Election Commission announced yesterday that it would revise its regulations to account for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Wisconsin Right to Life case to exempt genuine issue ads from regulation under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. The FEC’s move is intended to make its rules clearer "in time for the Presidential primaries and caucuses in early 2008."

An important aspect of all this is the regulation of speech, under the guise of campaign reform, that criticizes or lobbies politicians for their policy views during an election campaign, but falls short of express advocacy of the election or defeat of a candidate. In California, the FPPC maintains a broadrule that extends regulation of communications beyond those containing just explicit words of express advocacy. That rule was enjoined in a court challenge as applied to initiative campaigns, but it still exists with respect to candidate elections. The FPPC ought to consider revising its rule consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, and add an explicit rule protecting "genuine issue ads" from regulation.… Read More

Ok, so everyone will be talking about the budget today, and we will hear lots of comments about the budget, about bloat, about special interests, and the like. The good news–it has tax cuts in it. I hear that the Democrats have all the signatures they want on the term limits initiative and want to turn it in as soon as possible. They don’t want to turn them in while the budget impasse continues. Something about bad public relations or something. The bad news, it still has a $105 billion spending plan, and keeps the structural deficits. To put this in perspective, the first budget I voted on was a $40.9 billion general fund plan. The budget when Gray Davis took office was $57 billion general fund, and when Schwarzenegger took office it was $78 billion general fund. Interestingly enough, all of the Davis increases ($21 billion) took place in his first two years in office, and then the budget collapsed. Schwarzenegger has increased the budget by $27 billion in 4 years, and it continues to grow.

The truth is, this budget was lost in January when the Governor submitted the budget.

But now for the off topic subject.

Two weeks ago,… Read More

From the time I was in t-ball, my dad always used to tell me that I needed to use two hands when catching pop ups. Sure, 99 times out of 100 it’s no big deal, and the out is made. But then there’s that other one…

It’s with that in mind that I write about the last night’s budget votes.

Throughout the night, the Assembly leaders hustled to get a budget, some budget, any budget passed. Negotiations took place. Concessions were made. Entire sections of the budget were rewritten hastily in the middle of the night, being fueled by cold pizza and colder coffee.

But last night, unfortunately, it seems someone forgot to remind our leadership to use both hands.

As part of the grand deal that was cut, the Research and Development tax credit for businesses was to be expanded, to provide conformity with the federal tax code relating to R&D. As part of the package that was agreed to, those provisions would then sunset in 5 years.

However, that isn’t exactly what made it’s way into the final product.

Instead of those provisions sunsetting in 5 years, the budget as written sunsets the entire section of the tax code relating to… Read More

I’m in Washington, D.C. and just attended a briefing of American Conservative Union board members by national pollster Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio, MacLaughlin, on his firm’s recent national in-depth survey of Republicans. This was a detailed and extensive study, involving 2,000 interviews in the polling sample, nationwide. It was not prepared for any candidate. The poll results are available on their site at: http://www.fabmac.com/releases.html.

Among the interesting findings of this survey, which tracked changing attitudes of Republicans, is the emergence of an identifiable new subgroup of Republican voters that Tony calls, "Dennis Miller Republicans." These types of Republicans have emerged in the last 10 years. They share a lot of the positions of "libertarian" Republicans, but they are not exactly libertarian. While Tony finds that libertarians in the Republican party (about 10% of them) remain essentially identifiable by their profound philosophical opposition to government authority, the Dennis Miller Republicans are ones who "just don’t like government,"… Read More

Night owls, the Assembly is going through the labor-intensive process of a ton of trailer bills to the main budget bill. The budget currently has 55 votes on the big board, one more than it needs to pass. But it is still "on call" which means that votes can change. This is done because the ‘deal’ will involve achieving 54 votes on all of these trailer bills, and you wouldn’t want to close the final budget vote until you pass the trailer bills concurrently. Once the trailers have all passed, and they lock int he final budget vote, we will bring you the intel on which GOPers voted for it. **Update 12:35am. A slight drama is playing out right now. Among the plethora of trailer bills is the health trailer bill, in which is funded, among many other things, an aweful lot of public funds for abortions. Like all trailer bills, it requires 54 votes. Right now, there are only 51 votes for it. … Read More

I have been hearing from a lot of Republicans on the Assembly side of the Capitol that there is a budget deal that has been crafted and approved — that it would contain some deficit spending, though closer to $500 million rather than the billions proposed by the Democrats.

That said, I think that folks are a bit premature. I just got off of the phone with Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman who assures me that there is no deal as now, and that his caucus has not signed off on a budget.

So, there is still hope that before this process is over, we can get to a budget that is balanced. I certainly wouldn’t encourage any legislator to cast a vote for budget that is not.

I keep hearing that Speaker Nunez has important vacation plans that he doesn’t want to cancel. The best way to do that is to give us a budget that doesn’t spend more than projected state revenues!

Anyways, I would hope we would see solidarity among our conservatives in the legislature, and we won’t rush to put up GOP votes for a… Read More

The "Is he in or is he out" talk has swirled for weeks regarding Mark Larson’s potential run for an open Duncan Hunter seat next year, especially after he left KOGO radio in early June. Many conjectured the move was solely for a congressional run, but he was pretty clear he needed to make the change, regardless of any shot at public office.

In his blog yesterday, Mark reveals a new and exciting partnership with John Lynch, CEO of Broadcast Company of the Americas, to "build" a new radio station: San Diego 1700 AM (which Lynch already owns, so nodrawn out FCC approval needed). Larson will serve as program director and do the weekly 5-9 am show at the redesigned station, among his many other ongoing roles.

Considering the title of his blog post, "A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME…ON THE WAY TO CAPITOL HILL: I got an offer I couldn’t refuse," it should be clear he’s not running, but then there’s this….

"John and I also agree in understanding the ‘call of community service’. He knows there may be a point in the… Read More