I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to a ton of coverage of the budget. Not shocking, I suppose. At any rate, you see a wide range of storylines, but it basically all boils down to not enough revenue, too much spending.

Yet that’s really only half the story.  Every time I hear Arnold talking about our overgrown spending and how our day of reckoning is upon us, why is it that nobody mentions that Arnold put his foot on the gas as we were driving off of the cliff. Remember that whole recall election? You know, where Arnold spent the campaign talking about the “car tax.” That would be the vehicle license fee that would have brought in about $30 billion since it was cut. Given all of the cuts that we have made, it wouldn’t have avoided everything. Back on April 15, the CA Budget Project’s blog took a look at why we are in the mess we are in.

Over the past 15 years, lawmakers have enacted tax cuts that will cost the state nearly $12 billion in 2008-09. That’s a larger loss than the $11.0 billion 2009-10 temporary increase in state tax revenues included in the February budget agreement.

You can get the full details on our thousand little cuts in this PDF from CBP. It really is staggering. We used the bubbles to slash at our traditional tax base, then sit back in amazement at our structural deficits. Now, where ever could that have come from?

Furthermore, why is it that Republicans only fall in love with “rainy day funds” when there is a budget shortfall, but during the good budget days, they just want tax cuts? Well, that’s relatively simple, it’s hard to pass a tax cut (although not impossible…see our most recent corp tax cuts) in a shortfall. So, if you want to slash at the government, you go for reserves.  That being said, reserves aren’t a bad idea. They’ve worked pretty well to blunt some of the pain here in San Francisco. Asm. (then supervisor) Tom Ammiano worked diligently to get the reserves approved. But the thing is, we had the money to do so at the time. Had we put money into reserves during the bubbles, rather than giving tax cuts to the rich, we would have skated across this recession with few cuts. Instead, here we are.

My ultimate point here is to make the point that the media, and the Legislative Democrats, should not let the Governor simply slink away from his legacy. He was driving this bus from way back in 2003 when he thought it was a good idea to cut taxes. To pretend that didn’t happen is both dishonest and delusional.