With the Republicans continuing their obstinacy, Democrats in the Legislature are looking for some way, any way, to make sure they don’t lose their pay after tomorrow’s Constitutional deadline.

The alternative plan would keep paychecks coming even though talks between Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans have snagged on the issue of taxes.

“We will have a budget,” said Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Barankin and others close to the process declined to provide details. But a fallback blueprint would almost certainly rely on accounting moves and other measures that would merely paper over the state’s remaining $10-billion shortfall: Democrats, who have sharply cut back many programs already, have little appetite for further reductions.

Barankin acknowledged that any plan written without a renewal of some tax increases or more drastic cuts would not fully restore the state’s financial health.

“There’s no way to solve our long-term fiscal problems without taxes],” Barankin said, and “Republicans are simply unwilling or incapable of supporting a budget that includes [more] revenue.” ([LA Times)

The Governor has already walked back from his hard-line “No Gimmicks” stance from the election.  Certainly that would appear to be what he wants, but he is trying to make some accommodation to get something, anything passed.  Most likely, some of that will be borrowing and a bunch of accounting tricks.

They have about 36 hours to pass something, who knows what we’ll get.

With the additional tax revenue coming in, the Republicans are already calling the tax extensions unnecessary.  However, the numbers just aren’t anywhere near that point yet, and Gov. Brown has no plans on dropping his pursuit of that revenue:

Having failed to win enough Republican votes to put the taxes on the ballot in June, the governor is expected to ask lawmakers to impose at least some of the levies first and seek Californians’ blessing after the fact, said officials with knowledge of Brown’s plan.

The governor faces rough seas in his quest for billions of dollars in additional income, sales and vehicle taxes.

GOP lawmakers’ resolve to block both a legislative vote for the taxes and a public referendum has intensified with recent news that state revenue is outpacing projections. The uptick could continue, they say, erasing billions from a $15-billion deficit.(LA Times)

Now, realistically, the best option at this point is to try to get the votes and just pass the taxes.  Getting those four GOP votes, however isn’t exactly a walk in the park.  So, we’ll get some sort of vote if we are ever able to get the taxes through.  Of course, at the same time, it is clear that Democratic super majorities are really the only way to create sustainable governance.  And hey, it might be possible.

I have a really hard time believing that this game of chicken will really end with the corporate powers really letting their GOP puppets decimate California’s infrastructure and educational systems, putting aside our other moral imperatives.  That being said, this is a high-stakes game of chicken, with more than a few parallels to the debt ceiling crisis in DC.  It will get resolved, but meanwhile we are on the tracks with a freight train heading right for us.

As April was closing, we noted the big surge in tax revenues as people got their taxes in on the last few days.  Now it seems that we are even doing better than we expected then:

State officials are reporting an unexpected $2-billion surge in tax receipts that will help lawmakers close the remaining $15-billion budget deficit, and the Capitol is humming with hope that more is coming. …

Some analysts say the surprise – the sign of a brightening economy – could be just the beginning. Revenue has crept up incrementally for months and jumped in April, when people paid their taxes. It may be time to raise projections, they say, with the potential for billions more to flow into state coffers.

“As much as a third of the deficit will probably, hopefully, disappear,” said Brad Williams, an economist and former chief revenue forecaster for the Legislature.(LA Times)

Of course, in California nothing is easy.  This increased revenue has come at a time when the Governor is attempting to find some way, any way, to extend the taxes from two years ago.  It’s a great thing, of course, but it sure does make the people who don’t want to really address the structural imbalance want to wait it out.

But in the end, we won’t close this deficit with mere hopes and prayers.  It is going to shrink, perhaps to as low as $10 billion or so, but it isn’t going to close on its own.  And the next $10 Billion of cuts won’t come easy.  That these increased revenues come with the higher tax rates should be a sign that extending them won’t kill the economy, but those facts are fairly unlikely to sway any of the Republicans.  You see, no matter what evidence of economic realities that you give them, they all point to one thing: lower taxes.  Economy is going strong? Lower the taxes! Budget deficit? Lower the taxes! California is burning? Lower the taxes!

The tax extensions aren’t what I would choose for sound policy, but they the best shot.  Now if we could just get the 2 Republican votes in the Legislature, we could get back to trying to rebuild the California Dream.

Well, the California Democratic Party Convention is set to begin in a few hours, and I am just shoving the last of my items into my bag as I get ready to head to Sacramento.  For the most part, the convention will be fairly unified.  Democrats are thankful for their electoral success in 2010’s elections, but what issues might arise?  Well, there’s always the budget, but there is one other issue rearing its head as we head into it.

A new David Binder Research poll is showing that a strong majority of voters now supports converting all of our death penalty sentences to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP):

A recent statewide survey of 800 high propensity voters conducted by David Binder Research showed a strong  63% support for converting all current death row sentences to life imprisonment without any possibility of parole  in order to save the state $1 billion dollars in five years, where the money saved would be required to pay for  public education and law enforcement. Notably, support for this idea to convert all of the death row sentences to save the state a billion dollars over five years receives support from all political parties and from across all regions of the state. This idea appears to be the type of solution voters are looking for politicians to develop, but this idea in particular is one that political figures have so far overlooked.  

This is likely to come up throughout the convention, but not likely from the podium.  However, grassroots support for a signal of agreement with this poll has been bouncing around over the last few days and weeks. I’m interested to see where the question goes from here.

I’ll be focusing much of my communications on Twitter, check my Twitter feed here.

UPDATE: On a somewhat related note, Governor Brown is actually letting the parole board do its job rather than what Govs. Davis and Schwarzenegger did by blocking pretty much every parole.  We can’t really begin to address the prison mess without prioritizing for dangers criminals.

With all of the cuts that Governor Brown has been making, at least he found one that isn’t totally objectionable.  He just announced that he’ll be (insert bad pun here…killing, pulling the plug, …) the new death row facility that Arnold had wanted to build:

Gov. Jerry Brown pulled the plug today on plans to construct a new housing facility for condemned inmates at San Quentin.

Brown said in a statement that he believes it would “be unconscionable to earmark $356 million for a new and improved death row while making severe cuts to education and programs that serve the most vulnerable among us.” (SacBee)

Given our lack of actually putting anybody to death since the beginning of Gray Davis’ administration, this probably makes a fair bit of fiscal sense.  Of course, so would just ending the charade of a death penalty entirely, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for now.

But with these targeted cuts, is Jerry Brown doing what Bill Lockyer has been suggesting by targetting projects and regions favored by Republican legislators?  Earlier in the week he suggested doing just that:

State lawmakers who want an all-cuts budget because less government is better should get their wish starting with their own districts, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer said this morning.

Lockyer, visiting the Bay Area News Group-East Bay’s editorial board, said that when these lawmakers – many of whom already serve the state’s most recession-stricken areas – start hearing from their constituents about even deeper cutbacks in police and fire services, public schools and universities, social services and the like, they’ll soon think the better of stonewalling a public vote on Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to extend current tax rates for five more years. (BayAreaNewsGroup)

Indeed, Senator Steinberg has echoed the sentiment.  Of course, the question of cutting specific regions gets kind of tricky, and very dicey politically.  I’m not saying it can’t be done, but for now this is really all gamesmanship.  Gamesmanship that probably should have started a few months ago, but that’s neither here nor there.

Of course, on the flip side, Republican Senate Leader Dutton says that it is all the Democrats fault because they won’t agree to the Republican plan.  Oh right, I remember that night in November when hell froze over and the Republicans took a majority.  The fact is that the Republicans are overplaying their hand, and eventually it has to have some ramifications for them.

Cutting into the budget for the death penalty is a good start, but it isn’t going to really get to the heart of the matter.  Unless we get some movement from the Republican legislators, the cuts are going to be coming directly from classrooms.

Governor Brown has been making the case for a vote on extending the sales taxes since January.  It’s not had much effect on the Republicans in the Legislature, but it does seem to making some headway with the people:

California voters agree with Gov. Jerry Brown that tax increases should help close the state budget deficit, and they want to vote on his plan for raising the revenue, according to a new Times/USC Dornsife poll. …

Sixty percent of those surveyed, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, said they back such an election. The alternative being pushed by most GOP lawmakers – forgoing an election and balancing the budget by cutting more from state services – was supported by just 33%.

You can view the full poll here, but there is some really interesting information.  It might drive pretty much any politically interested person crazy as much of it is wildly conflicting, but that’s kind of what you get when you ask questions that drop nuance in favor of simplicity.  Not that there is anything wrong with this poll, but asking questions that really focus on values is more of an art than a science.

The bold face numbers aren’t so bad, with only 25% of voters preferring a cuts only budget when they find out that such a budget would require cuts to K12 education.  Later on down the line you see that when asked if they support a state budget cap at the rate of inflation, a pretty strong majority supports it.  Of course, the fact that a budget that only increased at that rate would require some pretty heavy cuts due to population growth didn’t come up.  Oh…and we still have outstanding debt that has to be paid at some point.

This really does reflect the bigger problem of a system of governance with no real leader.  There isn’t anything wrong with the Governor, it is just that the system is designed to fail.  The elected leaders are subject to the whim of the initiative system, a process that favors feel-good slogans over sound policy.  For now, we have to deal with it, as Republicans are increasingly recalcitrant.  But, this is really no way to run one of the world’s largest economies.

After all, what it comes down to is that Californians want their cake, and they want to eat it too.  They want their two Santas, one to give them stuff, one to cut their taxes. While there are these competing visions (one of which, the Laffer-curve mania, has never been shown to work for anybody but the rich), we really can’t be surprised with these type of results. After all, the Republicans have been telling everybody that they can get something for nothing for years.

If we can get it on the ballot, a focused campaign can pass revenues, of that I am confident.  My certainty doesn’t extend much past that.