I’ve been thinking about this one for a couple days, and the most recent Capitol Notes podcast just brought it up, as reflected in John Myers’ Twitter feed.  First, the equation:

2/3 of 39 = 26.

See, right now there are 39 State Senators.  Mark Ridley-Thomas’ seat is vacant until a special election.  Under 2/3 rules, a full Senate would need 27 votes to pass a budget or a tax increase.  The state Constitution requires 2/3 of “the membership” for passage, which is very consistent throughout the document.  Percentages of “the membership” is always the language.  Here’s an example:

(d) No bill except the budget bill may contain more than one item of appropriation, and that for one certain, expressed purpose. Appropriations from the General Fund of the State, except appropriations for the public schools, are void unless passed in each house by rollcall vote entered in the journal, two-thirds of the membership concurring.

And if “the membership” is defined as the current membership, then only 26 votes are necessary in the State Senate as currently composed.

So is it really the case that the legislature sat through marathon weekend sessions with still no resolution because everybody forgot to do the math?  Can that really be?

I think Steinberg might as well send the parts of the bill with 26 votes to the Assembly or to the Governor for signage, and if anyone pouts about it we can go to court.  The originalist interpretation is clearly that just 26 votes are needed.

Update by Robert: Unfortunately this may not be workable according to Article IV Section 2(a) of the Constitution:

The Senate has a membership of 40 Senators

I too liked the idea of pushing 26 votes, but the Constitution seems clear on defining “membership” as 40.

Update by Dave: Robert’s argument is compelling, but Anthony York’s article cites a law professor who says it’s not entirely clear.

Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution says the “Senate has a membership of 40 Senators…”

But if there is a vacancy, does that change the membership for legal purposes?

“It certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibilty that would be considered a valid interpretation of Article IV,” said Floyd Feeney, a law professor at U.C. Davis. “Courts make interpretations like that every day of the week.”

Feeney said he was not sure if there were other provisions in state law that might contradict, or supplement, the language in that section of the Constitution.

“Clearly, I’d want to do a lot more research before I sign an advice letter on something like that,” he said. “But there certainly would be an argument.”

Of course, getting this adjudicated would likely take longer than even this interminable process….

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

Today’s San Jose Mercury News front page story is about California’s budget problem: that they are still one vote short.  But Californians reading the story are not told why one more vote is required, not are they told who it is required from — until the 10th paragraph.  The 10th paragraph reads,

The votes were there in the Assembly. But in the Senate, only two Republican senators were prepared to buck party orthodoxy and vote to raise taxes. Three were needed.

Even in this 10th paragraph readers are not informed that every Democrat is voting for the budget.  

Before this paragraph, readers are told that “lawmakers” cannot agree and that “the deal still was held hostage by the thinnest of margins.” But there is nothing telling them who or why.

The reason this is such a problem is that the people of California need this information, to help them play their part in the functioning of our state government.  The voters need to know who to hold accountable or they will not make their wishes known through calls to their Assemblymember’s or Senator’s office.  And they can’t make informed decisions at election time.

This is typical of stories about the budget impasse — across the state the major newspapers, radio and TV stations are not giving the voters the information they need in order to participate in their government.  The result is that the state is becoming ungovernable — and going broke.

So let’s be clear about what is happening here.  California’s elected Republicans have all signed a “no-new-taxes” pledge with Grover Norquist’s organization.  (He’s the guy who says the plan is to make government small enough to “drown in a bathtub.”)  So now they see the budget crisis as an opportunity to force mass layoffs of state employees and reductions in support for people who need things like state-supplied oxygen tanks.  They call that “reducing government.”  And even with all the budget cuts that the Democrats have all voted for, they still will not vote to pass a budget.  They want more, and then more, and then they want the state government to go away.

This is ideology. They repeat an ideological mantra that will ruin the state.  And they say this is their goal — to get rid of government.  They say government is bad.  They say government spending is bad.  They say taxes are bad.  They say corporations are good.  Ideology.

California can not continue to fund our schools, universities, roads, public safety, firefighters, health services, services to the poor, blind and elderly, provide funding for local government, etc. without additional revenues.  Do the Mat (George Skelton, LA Times):

It’s Republican dogma in the Capitol that to vote for a tax increase is “career-ending.” Even if true — and there’s evidence both ways — so what?

These are folks, after all, who sermonize against making politics a career, publicly pretend to worship term limits and preach the virtues of private enterprise. You’d think they’d be eager to return to the private sector. Yet, they’re afraid to risk losing out on their next political job.

Another item not reported is that the Republicans demanded a huge tax cut for large corporations — the very kind that are killing off California’s smaller independent, job-creating businesses.

And they still won’t vote for the budget.  And the public still doesn’t have a chance to learn what is going on here.

Click through to Speak Out California

Just a thought or two on this whole mess while we wait for the Senate to reconvene.  While I didn’t think it was the best strategy to announce a deal and start voting on it before there was an actual deal in place (although the rumor that Dave Cox reneged on a handshake deal changes my perspective a bit), Darrell Steinberg seems to have backed into a strategy of playing Yacht Party obstruction out very publicly, so that the essential insanity of their anti-tax, sink-the-state agenda can be well-described by what’s left of political state media.  So George Skelton does the math and refutes the Yacht Party assertion that cutting spending alone can solve the budget crisis, and Dan Walters manages to describe the situation accurately.

And we all sit at our computers and type out our “even Dan Walters and George Skelton believe” articles, eternally hopeful that this is the corner-turning event, that the public will find the right people to blame for the sorry state of affairs, and punish them repeatedly forever more.  Only it’s wishful thinking.  First of all, I hate to break it, but nobody reads George Skelton and Dan Walters.  They are opinion leaders to about .001% of the electorate.  Second, there was another audience watching Sacramento this weekend, and they were the bondholders, who would be crazy to allow California to borrow one more red cent from them given the political fracturing (and this budget calls for 1.1 trillion red cents, or $11 billion dollars, to be borrowed).  Even if this passed tomorrow there would need to be lots of short-term debt floated to manage the cash crisis until new revenues actually reached state coffers, and with the bond rating the lowest in the country and the dysfunction being played out, I don’t see it happening.

The other point is that this is, let’s face it, a bad deal for Californians.  Among the sweeteners thrown in the deal to attract that elusive third Republican vote are a $10,000 tax break for home buyers to re-inflate the bubble and set the state economy up for an even bigger crash; weakened anti-pollution laws that will cost the state additional public health and environmental cleanup spending in the long-term; a potential budget cap that will make it impossible for public schools and social services to meet demand; and much more.  The tax changes, which are short-term except for a huge break to multinationals, tax things that we want to encourage in a downturn, work and consumption.  What the federal government is offering to spur demand and get the economy moving again is exactly what the state government will be cutting to balance the budget.  That’s not an argument to kill it, but it’s a reflection of reality.

So there will be at best a kind of zero-growth stasis, and at worst a further crumbling of the local economy, with shrunken revenues likely to require another round of this by summer.  Ultimately, the media cannot help the Democratic Party solve this problem.  The bill is coming due for 30 years of anti-tax zealotry and the belief that we can provide whatever citizens need without paying for it.  There isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel.  That some opinion leaders are coming around about 20 years to late doesn’t wash the blood from their hands.  And that the Democratic Party is finally thinking that they should maybe fight against the 2/3 requirement that has relegated them to a functional minority in Sacramento since is was instituted doesn’t absolve them for 30 years of inattention.

It gives me no pleasure to bear the bad news, but there’s no wake-up call on the horizon.  Even all 38 million Californians coming to the same “Hey, GOP is suxxor” conclusion at the same time doesn’t change structural realities.  Those must be fought for over years if not decades, and it is not defeatist to wonder whether it’s too late.

…I think Joe Matthews says it fairly well.

The weekend madness in Sacramento, product of the California Republican Party and its persistent refusal to accept reality, has finally led much of what remains of the media in California to call bullshit on their obstructionism. Even high Broderists like George Skelton, who usually find a way to avoid saying it’s all the Republicans’ fault, today finally comes around in an excellent column that destroys the Republican notion that we can close the gap without new taxes:

To avoid raising taxes and still balance the books in Sacramento, you’d have to virtually shut down state government…

Ardent anti-taxers say the governor and Legislature should simply whack the “bloated” bureaucracy by 10%. Even 20% if need be. Lay off and cut pay. Pare benefits too. After all, private companies are doing it.

You could lay off all those state workers — rid yourself of their pay and benefits — and save only $24.4 billion….

OK, lose the Legislature, you say. It’s good for nothing. But it’s also not worth much when you’re trying to fill that size deficit hole. The Legislature’s 16-month cost is roughly $400 million.

So now one branch of government is critically wounded, and another is dead. And we’re still $16 billion short of enough savings….

You could cut off all state money to higher education — the two university systems and the community colleges. That would save the remaining $16 billion.

Hardly any Californian actually wants any of this. They don’t want to shut down the prison system and let hundreds of thousands of criminals out on the streets. They don’t want to close the DMV, or shut down the CHP, or destroy their children’s chances at a college education, or close their neighborhood school.

They don’t want any of that. But that’s exactly what Republicans propose to do by their insane anti-tax position. It makes clear that Republicans see themselves as not representing the people of California, but instead they merely represent John & Ken and the staff of the Howard Jarvis Association. They see their oath as to Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge and not to the state constitution. And because of the 2/3 rule, we’re all forced into membership in the death cult.

Regardless of the fate of this budget, it should now be clear to California that the Republican Party is a threat to our state’s basic survival. The next move needs to be a systematic disempowerment of these terrorists. The 2/3 rule must be eliminated at the first available opportunity. And then we go after their seats – whether through a recall or a vote in 2010.

Hopefully this time, the media will not stand in the way of removing the last obstacles to economic recovery and a stable and effective government here in California.

Per an update from Anthony Wright of Health Access and The Community College League folks, the Senate now stands adjourned until 11am tomorrow.  I peeked a bit of the speeches towards the end of the session, and I would concur wholeheartedly with obscureSportsQuarterly’s comment. Aanested is crazy.  And Sen. President Pro Tem. Steinberg is really, really angry. Update: Check out Sen. Steinberg’s speech. It really is something.

Feel free to vent.

At the root of the Republican-induced budget crisis is, of course, taxes. Dave Cox claimed the taxes would “drag down the economy” and Maldonado is trying to save face by claiming Obama is against new taxes. And Tony Strickland had perhaps the most absurd line of the day:

“If we pass this budget,” he said, “Los Angeles and San Francisco will become the Detroit(s) of the West.”

Don’t look now Tony, California’s unemployment rate isn’t that far behind Michigan’s. The destruction of public services you insist upon – gutting food stamps, Medi-Cal, and schools – would drag California into the abyss.

The Yacht Party’s opposition to new taxes flies in the face of history. Their sainted leader, Ronald Reagan, pushed through a $1 billion tax increase in 1967 to preserve the California Dream – still the largest tax increase, by percentage, in state history. It did not ruin the economy.

In 1991 Pete Wilson, another Republican governor, pushed through a $7.3 billion tax increase. California didn’t collapse – instead we embarked upon ten years of sustained economic growth.

By saving the public services that businesses and workers depend upon to function in a modern society, Reagan and Wilson enabled California to survive temporary crises.

They have been replaced by a very different Republican Party. Today’s Republican Party, in both Washington DC and Sacramento, answers only to their far-right base – Rush Limbaugh, John & Ken, Grover Norquist. They have been thoroughly rejected by the voters, reduced to small minorities and excluded from the executive branch leadership positions (the governor’s office being an exception).

The Republican Party now exhibits the logic of a terrorist organization – willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone to their ideological purity. And it’s worth noting that they themselves embrace that description, with one Republican Congressman equating their party to the Taliban. Rush Limbaugh says he wants Obama – and thus America – to fail; John and Ken and the California Republican Party are essentially saying the same thing about California.

Let the state fail, they say. Let all the schools close, all the health care workers be fired, all the buses and trains shut down, all the construction workers laid off. Let the economy collapse, because god forbid they step down from their ideological pedestals.

Republicans have become the party of no – no to economic recovery, no to fiscal stability, no to the very government they have sworn to uphold. Because of the 2/3 rule, we are all their hostages. The fate of California now rides on one of the most thin-skinned and petulant members of the Senate.

Democrats have bent over backwards – perhaps too much so – to try and produce a deal and stop the state from “going over a cliff”. But they’re negotiating with madmen. Unfortunately, thanks to the 2/3 rule, we have no other choice.

Or do we? Along with being an open thread on the budget, let’s use this thread to debate what the strategy ought to be going forward to deal with the Kamikaze Party and their desire to destroy our future to satisfy their small band of followers.