While their Congressional counterparts are busy offering nonsense budgets based on outdated numbers, California’s Republican legislators have decided to offer nothing at all in the way of solutions to the budget mess. Zed Hollingsworth tells George Skelton today that his caucus will offer no solid proposals and will hope that the Depression and the 2/3 rule will do their anti-government work for them:

Like most Republican lawmakers, Hollingsworth only says that the new tax hikes should have been avoided. Similarly, any future budget-balancing measures must  exclude tax hikes. But he doesn’t say precisely how….

So besides painful cuts in programs like education and healthcare, what else is possible? He answers: “Now’s a chance to look at some of these big reforms we always say we’re going to do and never do.”

Such as? Combining the state Board of Equalization and the Franchise Tax Board. The former collects the sales tax; the latter the income tax.

OK, but between the two, they spend less than $1 billion annually.

The GOP list gets really vague after that. “There are potential things we’re starting to think about, but we can’t go into much detail yet, because we don’t have much detail.”

And because of the 2/3 rule, which gives conservatives a veto over the state’s budget and spending priorities, he will never have to go into any detail at all. They just have to sit back, say “no” to anything that isn’t far-right in nature, and force the Democrats to come to their position.

Regardless of the outcome of the May 19 election, this will continue to be the pattern in the Capitol until the conservative veto is eliminated.

It’s also important to note that although Skelton considers the education and health care cuts as an aside, to the Republicans these are actually central to the plan. Their goal seems to be to defund those programs, perhaps in their entirety, and force everyone in California to pay for their schooling and medical care out of pocket. It’s an embrace of inequality and oligarchy, a statement that if you can afford to have the essentials of life you deserve, and if you can’t afford it, screw you.

Democrats need to become more assertive about pointing this out to people. The May 19 propositions distract from that core message, especially when Dems are out there selling Props 1D and 1E, which are unconscionable raids on children’s programs and mental health care in order to pay for larger corporate tax cuts. Again, regardless of what happens on May 19, every Californian who is not part of the right-wing agenda needs to hammer this point home at every possible opportunity.

Republicans have no solutions to this crisis. They merely see it as an opportunity to shock doctrine us into accepting their attack on the public services that produce prosperity and make a modern society livable. We’re not going to let them win.