It has been easy for me to ignore the liberal bloggers, newspaper columnists, even “reporters” but now Republican commentators have repeated the myth that the current budget situation is a once in a decade leverage opportunity. The truth is that every urgency bill which requires a ⅔ vote is a leverage opportunity. Every partisan bill is a leverage opportunity for Republicans and in the past every budget bill has been a leverage opportunity. There is no once in a decade opportunity.
And to be clear every urgency bill which by definition takes effect immediately also negates the voters’ right to referend that bill. A referendum election is called quickly before a law takes effect. An urgency law takes effect then the opponents have the burden of keeping up the fight until the next regularly scheduled statewide election. There is a loss of democratic rights on every urgency bill. So every leverage opportunity is accompanied by a loss of voter rights.
So what is leverage? In its crudest sense (this is politics after all) it is vote trading. Hypothetically speaking I will vote for your tax extension election if you will sign my pension reform bill. Voting trading under the law is a felony. While most people think of vote trading as the ‘I will vote for you dam if you vote for my highway’ scenario; the transaction applies equally here. Now all of the players are too sophisticated to every actually say any of these things. And the negotiations on all these issues have smaller and smaller circles of controversies within themselves. Nevertheless if someone supports a bill that they oppose – Such as voting to call a special election to consider extending tax increase then urging a NO vote on the ballot measure. – that vote is going to haunt that legislator for a very long time. Neither Governor Brown/State Chamber of Commerce/state labor unions nor Republicans are going to be pleased with that kind of stance.
Now if I were a Republican legislator and I knew that I would not vote to cut the budget any further nor would it be responsible to borrow more money or play any accounting games then I would enter the discussion to extend the tax increases. My first question then is it going to pass? Have you noticed in all this discussion over Republican leverage and all this hype that the Brown budget has made all the cuts possible that no one has taken a simple survey. I am sure some have. But I am also sure that the results do not look too good for Brown. My first question is the proper political and financial one. If this is not a path to success in adopting a tax increase budget for the coming year then why waste four months of time on it?
So no matter what you ask for in trade exchange no lets say, as part of a global solution you are still held hostage to a successful passage of the ballot measure to extend tax increases. No Governor or liberal Legislature is going to let Republicans get new law on pension reform, environmental reform, tax reform, regulatory reform or any other kind of reform if that tax increase goes down in flames.
Which brings me back to the start. This is a regular year in year out leverage opportunity but one that has a long tail because it is not until the election outcome is decided that the deal is complete. And the other point that unless the Democratic party machine can show me how they are going to win this special election to hit people in the wallet then all we have accomplished is to waste the honeymoon period of the new Governor with an even more terrible summer ahead.