This week the Republican members of the California State Senate and State Assembly will hold a ‘retreat’ at Donald Bren’s posh Island Hotel (formerly the Four Seasons) in Newport Beach, California. This multi-day affair is an annual tradition, and affords a chance for nearly fifty GOP legislators to come together and spend some ‘quality time’ — getting to know one another (over a quarter of these legislators are taking office for the first time next week), and look at their political and policy strategies for the upcoming legislative session and election cycle.
If FR readers will recall, on the Thursday after the election, Assembly Republicans caucused for several long hours and emerged with a new leader – Mike Villines of Fresno. We featured a column from Villines on this site the very next day, where the new Assembly Republican Leader talked about his priorities, paramount of which is trying to bring fiscal discipline and sanity to state government.
Because of the way California’s Constitution is worded, it takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature to enact a tax increase, or to pass a state budget. It also takes a two-thirds vote to place measures, legislatively, on a statewide ballot. It will be these ‘super-majority’ votes that will be the key to empowering Republican legislators in the Senate and the Assembly to achieve the goal of imposing fiscal discipline.
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November 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
“You can’t claim the benefits of winning at the loser’s window”.
Jesse Marvin Unruh
November 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
We have own share of “navel gazers” within the Rino component of the Republican Party. They claim to be fiscal Conservatives. In reality this “prinicple” allows them to dump on taxpayers if it enhances their own self interest. No one is claiming winner status, but we can slow outrageous legislation that increases spending if we stick together. Edda Gahm