They say that only in the face of adversity can you take full measure of someone’s performance. Well, the multi-year overspending crisis that has created such a chasm between state spending and available tax revenues has really given State Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines an opportunity to demonstrate that they are great leaders.
Republican and anti-tax leaders and activists up and down the Golden State have taken note of this “GOP Dynamic Duo” – their leadership has the two Republican Caucuses working in tandem in a way that hasn’t been seen in many years.
Let’s remember that Cogdill and Villines are politicians in a Capitol that is overflowing with special interests and consumers of government — yet they are able to keep their grounding, and understand that their job is to represent all Californians. They have both demonstrated an understanding that growth in state government flies in the face of an American tradition of a truly limited role for the central state. They have also repeatedly made it clear that from a pragmatic point of view that increasing the public sector at the expense of the private sector would be terrible for California’s economy.
A unique opportunity exists to make “lemonade” out of the sour lemon that is thus budget crises. State government can actually shrink, or if we can even realize a substantial reduction in its growth, and it happens under the watch of Cogdill and Villines, and their leadership of unified legislative Republicans.
This would be a tremendous achievement for Cogdill and Villines, and serve as an inspiration to their successors — that government doesn’t just have to get bigger and bigger.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:00 am
With all due respect to Leaders Villines and Cogdill, I don’t think we can deem their performance solid before a deal is even struck.
I don’t think the Republican caucuses in Sacramento have even come close to winning the message war. In the dominant media, the impasse is still “draconian cuts” vs. tax increases (more often “revenue increases”).
If I didn’t listen to John and Ken, I wouldn’t know that student enrollment is down (which begs the question of why K-12 spending is supposed to go up.)
Where are the “earned media” opportunities to point out facts like that, or to shine the light on specific bureaucracies that suck taxes, but don’t produce for the people?