A while back, we talked about the Republicans failure to be pragmatic? Well, how’s this for pragmatic…even if they get what they want, they won’t put taxes on the ballot:
Senate Republicans have no interest now in providing votes to put Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed tax increase extensions before voters, even if Democrats agree to overhaul the state’s pension system and enact a spending cap, the Senate’s top Republican said Wednesday.
Sen. Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga, in an interview with The Bee Capitol Bureau, said Democrats should prepare an all-cuts budget to erase the $26.6 billion budget deficit. He said Republicans may or may not provide votes for that approach.
“They really don’t need us to govern at all,” Dutton said of the Democrats who control both legislative houses and can make cuts by majority vote. “They just need us if they want to raise taxes.”
Dutton said the “day of reckoning” has come to California after repeated budget deficits.(SacBee)
We’ve already seen what a no-taxes budget looks like, and frankly, there is no way that the California electorate would support it. So, hey, maybe he should just get the votes to put that on the ballot. See how the voters of of California take to massive cuts to K-12 spending.
Of course, there are other ways to get these measures on the ballot. They aren’t necessarily attractive, but at this point, it’s hard to see how else the state functions. The Republicans, of their own acknowledgement, have no serious interest in seeing anything other than the downfall of this state.
Maybe it is time to ramp up that split the state talk…
Concentrate the cuts in the districts of the recalcitrant assemblymen.
But, first get their votes on the record against any reasonable effort to put a tax proposition on the ballot. Then, when they vote no, zero out the funding for their districts and let them complain — and then explain that this is the budget they wanted, the voters in other districts were willing to elect representatives willing to consider other options, so they get better funding.
If they want a budget war, give it to them.
…to review Speaker Boehner’s recent experience with the spare F-35 engine.
http://tinyurl.com/4adm9ff
can we just target the cuts to the areas they represent? sure it’ll hurt their constituents, but so would the alternative…
The first comment on the story you linked to was from me. It said there was one more way to get these tax extensions on the ballot. If we are going to do it with signatures, we’d better get started though. Since this is a more attractive way than the one you mentioned before, I’m surprised nobody is talking about it yet.
That said, the GOP response is pretty amazing. How do they expect to be taken seriously as a political party if they’re not willing to participate at all?
In Wisconsin the new governor created the deficit by giving a massive tax credit to Wal-Mart. Then he used the deficit to cut government pay and destroy collective bargaining for all unions in WI. Ads supporting these moves in all red states were on the air before WI and Ohio union-bashing and government-worker bashing legislation. The GOP feels it has nothing to lose. They prefer US.Inc. to what we have had over the past 50 years. No point in trying to argue with them. They are five steps ahead of us and “democracy” is not on their agenda. Their massive corporate funding gives them the political “buy”. We will wake-up after it is over.
This is probably true… when people are asked about specific cuts. But I’m not sure that they’ll get from there to voting to raise taxes. Americans generally (and Californians in particular, it seems) are unable to make the connection between taxes and services — we’re always looking for the magic asterisk, usually in the form of demanding that government employees work for Wal-Mart wages.
I suspect that Jerry B. and the Dems will get no credit for trying to do the hard things that Republican superminority rule has required, but will get all the blame for “tryin’ to raise yer taxes” and any of the draconian cuts that will be required if that doesn’t work. (And for every single dissatisfaction with government services even if the tax increases do go through: “I thought those Dems were gonna fix this! That’s why they raised taxes, wasn’t it?”)
there really needs to be an oil and gas extraction fee. Even Texas isn’t stupid enough to let that source of revenue escape, but California is. It would be a popular tax, especially in view of the recent obscene oil company profits. Even if the legislature won’t go for this, I can’t believe Jerry’s beholden to the oil companies, so why isn’t it even being discussed?
As a Conservative and a new Republican (yes, I rejoined the party that I quit after Bush’s wild spending days). I fully support the idea of putting tax increases to a public vote. I have no doubt it will fail and see no harm in putting it on the ballot.
The unemployment rate is sky high, CA homeowners are still hurting. If anyone thinks that a tax increase is going to pass to “save” K-12 education, then they are not in touch with the economic reality of the private sector. I doubt anyone really believes that test scores will drop if K-12 funding cut. CA already has terrible in test scores, how far could they realistically drop? If we were in the top 10% in the nation, I’d be concerned. From the Chronicle “Thank goodness for Mississippi and Alabama. If not for the two southern states, California students would be at the bottom of the national heap in mathematics, according to the 2009 Nation’s Report Card released Wednesday.” I’d have a lot more respect for CA teachers as a group (individually some of them are great) if they were protesting these low test scores and working with Gov. Brown in emergency session on how to improve them.
I think a lot of people who currently work in government jobs are very out of touch with current economic reality. The community in which I live: the GM and employees just took a 12% and now the GM gets $246K, the average employee $130K. They use all kinds of excuses to justify this outrage. I’m convinced that a large percentage (perhaps a majority) of public employees will never do the right thing for the financial well-being of our state.
All the best,
John