Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is deserving of praise this morning, for his quick and public rejection of the billions of dollars in tax increases that are included in the package of changes in the state budget introduced by Democrat legislative leaders yesterday. Key provisions of the Democrats’ plan include a 50% hike in state cigarette taxes as well as the creation of a tax on oil. Governor Schwarzenegger has made it clear that he will veto this package if it is placed on his desk as proposed. Of course, even before the Governor gets legislation to fix the budget deficit, there is the question of whether Democrats will work with legislative Republicans – their track-record for doing so isn’t so good, and it was not a positive sign that Republican legislators pretty much found out about the details of this proposal at the same time as the rest of us. A bi-partisan fix is important because without a 2/3 vote in the Senate and Assembly, it will be several months before any of the changes are enacted. With the supermajority support, changes go into effect immediately.
I am sure that many will scrutinize the details of this latest proposal, which purports to contain no borrowing. But when I saw, just from a cursory review of some of the proposal’s contents, that $1.2 billion of the “solution” to this problem is an accounting gimmick – moving the June 30 payroll to state employees to July 1st (presumably in perpetuity), sliding that liability into the next fiscal year by one day.
As we’ve said before, the Democrats in the State Legislature, for the most part, fall into two categories – union hacks and ideologues (these are not mutually exclusive by the way). The union hacks have had their way – this proposal by the Democrats, as the Governor pointed out yesterday, increases the tax burden on Californians while it rejects the 5% across the board pay cut that the Governor has advocated for state employees. As for the ideologues – great effort is made by Democrats to “maintain the safety net” of social programs that represent a massive multi-billion dollar redistribution of wealth.
Governor Schwarzenegger’s strong statements yesterday match his pledge to see this state fiscal crisis resolved without higher taxes, and without gimmicks. Hopefully the Governor gets to use his veto pen, because I hope that Capitol Democrats vote out their plan as proposed, and allow the Governor to “terminate it” at his desk. This will allow Republicans to campaign next year on the tone-deafness of the majority party.
Then the Governor and legislative Republicans need to insist that Democrats produce a complete $24 billion dollar solution without tax increases to put forward for bipartisan support. Republicans are NOT going to support “kicking the can” by approving some cuts but not enough to get us through the entire fiscal year.
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June 18th, 2009 at 12:00 am
He’s just brushing up on his acting skills Jon. We don’t believe a word he says.