Governor Jerry Brown released his budget plan yesterday. It’s no surprise that Brown is mixing cuts and revenues, but the overall thing has an air of disappointment to it, particularly the fact that he proposes to extend the February 2009 taxes and not seek more fundamental reforms, such as restoring the Wilson-era upper income tax brackets or seeking an oil severance tax.
Brown also is proposing some ugly cuts, and is suggesting these may be permanent. The social services cuts resemble those that Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently proposed, although Brown is thankfully not suggesting anything like eliminating CalWORKS, as Arnold did. The proposed cuts drew concern from Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project:
However, the Governor also proposes deep cuts that will weaken the public structures that many Californians rely on, including CalWORKs, the state’s highly successful welfare-to-work program; state- assisted child care for families struggling to make ends meet; Medi-Cal, a state-federal health insurance program; and the Healthy Families Program, which helps families purchase affordable health coverage for their children.
Protecting our core public systems and structures is essential for securing a prosperous future and paving the way for an economic recovery. Lawmakers and voters should examine the Governor’s proposals in the context of what they mean not just for the next 12 months, but also five, 10, and 20 years in the future.
Ross did praise Brown for adopting a “balanced” approach to the budget, seeing new revenues as a core element of the solution instead of as a small and grudging concession, as did Arnold Schwarzenegger, fueled as he was by an ideologically anti-tax attitude. But the proposed cuts will have lasting negative consequences that will be devastating to the safety net, and therefore, to the ability to produce lasting and sustainable economic recovery.
It’s regrettable, but not surprising, that Brown still sees value in austerity, even if it’s to be balanced out by some new revenues. The Brown Administration projects a possible $3 billion surplus by 2013-14 if the revenue increases are approved, and while that might be a pathway to restoring some of the cuts, he’s much more likely to want to hoard it (which would be as stupid an idea as it was in the late ’70s) or to use it to pay down debt.
The shift of money and responsibility to counties will be very, very interesting and has to be watched closely to ensure this doesn’t become a license to red counties to misuse the money and screw people who need services. And the fight over the redevelopment agencies will be a massive battle, as they have well-funded allies who won’t go down quietly.
Still, it seems worth mounting a fight for the new revenues anyway, especially if they are presented to voters in a “clean” form, not weighed down by right-wing trojan horses as was Prop 1A in May 2009.
Governor Brown’s political instincts have never been radical. He has always believed in taking the electorate as it was (or at least as he thought it was), instead of trying to move voters toward a new political understanding. In that way he shares a lot with President Obama, who also counsels Democrats to accept a supposed reality of a center-right electorate and to be content with incremental gains.
There’s no doubt that much in Brown’s budget has the potential to dramatically reshape California government, and to help provide some stability to public services. At the same time, Brown has again shown his cautious and conservative (in the sense of being unwilling to rock the boat) instincts with this budget. In the end, I have to agree with those who have called Brown’s budget a missed opportunity. It’s better than what we’d have gotten with Meg Whitman, of course, but it shows progressives that they still have work to do in order to reshape the discussion of programs and revenues in Sacramento, even as we work to get voter approval for the spring initiatives.
While the taxes are not in the form any progressive would like, they have the big advantage of being a continuation of current policy rather than a change. Just like eliminating the Bush tax cuts is claimed by the Reps to be a tax “increase” (putting those Reps in 2001 and 2004 in the position of voting for the largest tax increase of all time), Dems can claim that continuing the taxes is not a tax increase (since they are already being collected).
Now, as regards to the spring special, it isn’t clear the Reps will agree (or they will add so many conditions, just like in 2009, that it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best).
I realize that there is talk of using a majority rule way around putting an initiative on the ballot, but I don’t know
if it will hold up.
There is another way. Let labor/education pay for an initiative which would qualify by the ballot by July, so
that Brown could call a special for September/October. Then there would be passed a complete cuts budget in June of 2010.
No money for water, none for local cops, prisons being emptied of half their inmates, UC’s being shuttered, schools on 160 as opposed to 180 days. Then people can see the consequences and they will, I suspect, vote accordingly.
The advantage of this is the taxes can then only hit corporations and the top 1%. Oil severance. Raises in top income taxes. Split roll (or effective split roll–reassessing when majority of shares change hands, rather than the corporate entity). Repeal of various business tax breaks.
Incidentally, even if we get something on the ballot in the spring, we should be qualifying some of these things for the 2012 fall ballot, when democratic turnout is at its top. The key is to tie the revenues (which should always be from corporations/top 1%) to something people want to support (education, health care). California is becoming more progressive every day and we have to keep these issues alive. Then, once something is passed, we need to keep explaining where the money is going. That’s why devolution from Sacramento (assuming it doesn’t disadvantage poor people) is a good thing–it puts issues locally.
I just read over at Capitol Report that the budget is basically Arnold’s and is rife with uncertainty.
Brown’s also cutting the disabled poor/elderly payments to the basement. As well as an even bigger reallocation of the first five money. Imagine the rhetoric here if Meg had won and proposed those two things.
They also note that the Medi-Cal forced reduction may not be legal, but I don’t get that. Maybe someone with better vision over that (i.e. anyone!) could help…
Finally, I think we’re looking at an even worse scenario to get to 2/3rds. Public Unions are going to take a hit, that’s inevitable.
but it could also be better. The LATimes has an interactive go-solve-the-budget-mess-yourself page (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/budget/). Just
–ceasing to waste prison money on nonviolent offenders who could be paroled or tracked instead,
–and raising taxes (mainly on corps and top 1%, but also the gas tax & vehicle excise tax)
is enough to generate billions of surplus. You don’t even need to peg all the taxes to the max. We could have a functioning state at a cost so low it wouldn’t even be felt. (Yowled about, yes, but not really felt.) And yet, somehow, it’s impossible to get that simple point across to too many voters.
I was pointing out to a colleague, who votes down all taxes on ballots, that if she’d voted for education these last few years, she could have avoided the over-$10,000 cost per year of sending her son to private school.
A few dozen dollars on one side, and dozens of thousands of dollars on the other. But I didn’t see her get the concept that taxes can be a cheaper solution to some problems.
Not my read on Obama at all. The balance of power in the Senate is center-right, so that’s what Obama grapples with.
is that it is much better than it could have been, but that schools will still see some very tough budgets ahead because of the loss of federal money that came in the last two years and because of increasing expenses for benefits etc.