Anyone who thinks this budget is the best that Sacramento could have produced, that it is remotely acceptable, has likely been around Sacramento too long and lost their perspective on reality. That seems to be what’s happened to George Skelton, who wrote a a remarkable column in today’s LA Times defending the indefensible deal:
Just as when Sacramento seizes money from cities and counties, it is not “living within its means,” as Schwarzenegger pledged the state would.
But that’s OK. Right now, the most important thing is to slap on a tourniquet and stop the bleeding that is flowing mainly from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Get the cash flowing. Revive the credit ratings.
There’s a classic quote from the German politician Otto von Bismarck: “Politics is the art of the possible.” Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders finally boned up on Bismarck.
I suppose it’s appropriate that Skelton holds up the man of blood and iron, who unified Germany at the point of a gun and disdained democracy, as a political model for California. Skelton has always been one of the more credulous members of the Sacramento press corps, and spends this column repeating the claims of longtime insiders like Rick Simpson or failed politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger without offering a critical or skeptical eye.
From the notion that the budget deal is a tourniquet – it ensures billions in deficits in future years as no provision whatsoever has been made to fund the promised repayments to schools and local governments – to the idea that our state’s credit rating will be repaired by this (the credit rating agencies are engaged in questionable practices and the bond markets still eagerly anticipate our issuances), Skelton would do well to question and challenge his sources instead of merely repeat their spin.
Particularly on the notion that the May 19 election is responsible for this:
The negotiated solution to the state’s projected $26-billion budget deficit — roughly $15 billion in spending cuts, and the rest mostly in raids on local government, problematic revenue and accounting tricks — was preordained by the May 19 special election.
The electorate soundly rejected the plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to create a modest spending cap, raise nearly $6 billion in general fund revenue immediately and generate $16 billion in future tax hikes. Liberal groups adamantly opposed the spending cap. Conservatives hated the taxes. And the $6 billion in immediate revenue went down with the rest of it.
After that, any new tax increase was politically impossible. To think otherwise was fantasy, especially since taxes already had been hiked by a hefty $12.5 billion in February.
And yet the budget proposal does NOT reflect the will of the people. As the David Binder poll made clear, Californians are willing to support higher taxes to fund core services. What they rejected on May 19, and what they are rejecting now, are budget “solutions” that hurt working people who depend on public services, “solutions” full of gimmicks that solve nothing and cause worse problems in the future.
We all know that the structure of our government must be changed as the first, necessary step to get our state out of crisis. But it doesn’t help matters to pretend that there aren’t innovative, sensible solutions out there that the Legislature could and should have embraced. The refusal to close the irresponsible $2 billion corporate tax loophole from the February budget deal, the unwillingness to levy the same oil tax every other state, including right-wing states like Texas and Alaska, levies shows a legislature that has essentially given up on the task of government and has already decided to let Arnold Schwarzenegger set the agenda within the boundaries Howard Jarvis, Grover Norquist and Milton Friedman laid down.
When legislators like Mark DeSaulnier stand up and call bullshit it shows that there is still some spark of life left in the Capitol. Instead of defending failure, folks with an LA Times column would do better to encourage people like DeSaulnier to reject the status quo and imagine better ways out of the mess.
For example, several commentators have pointed out that California should follow North Dakota’s lead and charter its own bank to lend to itself and start to escape the downward financial spiral. The Legislature could also start caring about economic recovery and reject Hooverite solutions that would merely worsen our economic and budgetary plight.
That’s what’s ultimately so pernicious and troubling about Skelton’s column – the notion that we should accept, even welcome legislative failure. It follows on his lower your horizons and suffer mentality of dealing with crisis – and therefore it suggests that if we are to ever escape this morass and rebuild California, its economy, and its government, we should vigorously reject this budget deal and demand our legislators get serious about repairing our government, our budget, and our economy.
Because as anyone who has ever taught a classroom knows, if you expect failure, then your students will fail. If you expect success, then they will work hard to try and achieve it. And even if they don’t all get A’s, they’ll be doing themselves and their community a service by achieving something better than failure.
The Skelton piece was staggeringly inept, and that’s our so-called “liberal media” at work, derided by the right wing pundits as the Left Angeles Times.
As the print media staggers under its debt load and failure to adapt, it sometimes seems like these old soldiers do little more than produce shitty pieces to try to hang onto their jobs by meeting the expectations of their desperate wingnut owners.
And other California papers are far worse, when they cover the state budget at all.
But don’t complain too stridently, or they’ll move Jonah Goldberg to covering California.
I seldom agree so totally with a post so there isn’t much to say about this one except that I hope a lot of people read it. Whenever I can, I proselytize for California having its own bank so we can loan money to ourselves without having to borrow it. It really works well in North Dakota.
Have you called your state representatives yet? If not please do. I called Nancy Skinner’s and Mark DeSaulnier’s offices yesterday and asked them to defeat this “budget?” proposal. I also dropped some alternative ideas for solving the budget problem. DeSaulnier’s office told me that sentiment was running against this proposal in my district. Evidently he gets a lot of constituent participation and that may be why he’s so willing to stand up against crap like this. Call you representatives and let them know what you want! Oh and while I’m still thinking about it; Please call your state representatives! Thank You
The only thing I can add to this valuable post is the impact on decades of this politics of failure to both constituent groups and, even more importantly, the whole idea of citizen engagement.
I’m a public school teacher. The past few months, I’ve seen my union, at both the state and local level, take positions that can best be described as protect the bunker at all costs. I understand this perfectly well because our leadership’s calculations are being made with an entrenched mindset that has developed after years of battling on this field.
Most recently, we see this at the state level, with CTA’s support of the May props and when that failed with the anti-Arnold ads of the past two weeks aimed at avoiding Prop 98 suspension. If measured by the last point, CTA is an immediate budget deal winner; Prop 98 was preserved. (No real surprise…the public in this state still supports public education…even the Republicans know this.) But wait, as Robert points out, there is no mechanism to ensure education repayment down the road and–the great unanswered question: what about the kids in school right now? What about the thousands of teachers laid off over the past few months and the new round of those likely to be cut over over the next few weeks? We’re told only that it could have been much worse…Prop. 98 survives…that’s what’s really important. We have lived to fight another day and all that.
Looking even a tiny bit deeper, though, we learn that part of the payment for education at least through the next two years is coming from a deliriously complex raid on city and county revenues–an act that could bankrupt some already teetering local governments, knee-cap local stimulus efforts, and enshrine poor planning practices for decades to come.
This also has the effect–intended or not–of pitting school districts against city and county councils, teachers against municipal workers.
At the local level, this plays out with local teacher unions like mine publicly silent when custodians see their jobs eliminated or drastically cut back (20-30 percent in my district)or as summer school is canceled. Vice-versa too. The local SEIU didn’t have much if anything to say when teacher positions were cut and class sizes raised. Given the realities of the assault, folks hunker down and protect their own.
As for citizens who support both their neighborhood schools and their neighborhood parks, they are left with little official explanation (from their electeds or from the all-too-compliant and complicit media) for the deterioration of both other than times are tough; there is just not enough money to go around. Painful choices must be made.
Thing is, because these choices have been made by a handful of top lawmakers holed up beyond all public view in the inner sanctum of the Governor’s offices, the people themselves are left with little to no sense of what options were left on the table. Ultimately, the best we’re told by our electeds is that the system is broken…there is just not anything more they could have done or that we can do right now.
But there is more, isn’t there? Unfortunately, with the myopia that comes from such a bunker mentality, few can see the virtue of the kind of imaginative thinking Robert writes about here. Even more basically troubling, is the sense that our legislative leaders and indeed the California Democratic party itself has lost all ability to speak directly to the people they serve. If mainstream media is compromised, then get creative and figure out how to go around it. But there’s been none of that. Throughout this crisis there has been no coordinated paid television and radio, no legislators blitzing their own districts, no coordination with and among natural constituency groups, no real Internet presence or social media organizing. All of this could have been used to inform and involve more people in order to strengthen the negotiating position. And, more importantly, to seed the field for the repair effort we all know is desperately needed.
The budget deal will pass–mostly intact–today or tomorrow. However, there are a few signs of life from the ailing citizenry. Local governments standing up is a good, healthy thing. Individual Dems, including Burton and Garamendi saying no way to off-shore drilling is hopeful too because it reflects the will of their constituents.
We all must support these efforts and create more as quickly as we can. How to reject this situation and re-engage as active citizens on all levels and against tough enemies is what we need to be talking about.
(I apologize for the length…I’m still figuring out the whole comment vs. diary thing here…)
* Kang (or was it Kodos?) Simpsons — Halloween episode 1996
This budget isn’t a good thing for Californians, period. When you are served undercooked food don’t you send it back?
The guy works for the L. A. Times, for cripes sake! His job is doomed! Misery loves company.