Here’s an article showing kind of a silly trumped-up sanctimony on behalf of the Yacht Party.

California voters said no, but Democratic lawmakers are pushing to do it anyhow.

The issue involves billions of dollars and a ballot measure so important to schools that the California Teachers Association spent more than $7 million in a failed attempt to pass Proposition 1B.

One month after the initiative died, Democrats are proposing to pay schools the same $7.9 billion that was the heart of the measure and to begin payments the same year, 2011-2012.

The funding commitment is part of a massive budget-balancing plan crafted by a joint legislative conference committee and scheduled to be voted upon this week by the Senate and Assembly.

Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, said the proposal to commit $7.9 billion to schools directly contradicts the people’s will.

“The voters have spoken and we need to listen,” Walters said. “Unfortunately, the majority party in Sacramento isn’t listening.”

Would that the Republicans always listen precisely to what the voters want – say, when they put 63% majorities into both houses of the Leigslature, for example.  The Republican Governor has asked for a $4.5 billion reserve at a time of economic crisis, when voters “rejected” a rainy-day fund in Prop. 1A.  You can argue the economics of a reserve fund that large on the basis that the economy still has some rough patches, but you can just as easily argue that the Governor is somehow upending the voter’s will.

The SacBee does offer the contextual reality of the Democrats’ effort here.  Before the May 19 special election, the California Federation of Teachers and associated groups sued the state for that $7.9 billion, which they feel is owed to them.  The dispute comes over how mandatory Prop. 98 funding gets calculated, and the CFT feels they have a solid argument that they actually deserved more money under the law than the state provided.  You can say that you don’t like mandates in funding generally, but the courts will eventually decide this dispute regardless of what the legislature does.  And Democrats can see the possibility – some would say probability – of CFT being able to win that lawsuit and receive payment immediately, rather than two years out (although “immediately” would probably not happen for a year or so, until the case worked its way through the courts).

Prop. 1B was essentially an attempted out-of-court settlement.  That having failed, the participants are going to court.  Incidentally, every subsequent budget cut adds to the money owed to schools under Prop. 98, which has ballooned to around $11 billion.  So the options are: either set up a future payment schedule, hope the courts rule in a way that would break with precedent, or dismantle Prop. 98 (which wouldn’t get the state off the hook for funds owed).  So when Mimi Walters argues that “the people have spoken,” she’s saying that they’ve spoken on cutting school funding to dead-last in the nation, all the while not answering the still-thorny problem of a current lawsuit.

Someone should tell her constituents that.

Late last week I received a statement from an anonymous state employee working at the Employment Development Department, which included some pretty stunning allegations about how Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are dealing with state workers.  For example, the Governor would reduce all state employee salaries by 5%, including ones not paid out of the General Fund but through other dedicated resources, including federal dollars.  Our budget deficit is a General Fund crisis, not a crisis of those other resources, and so there is absolutely no necessity to reduce those salaries.  In addition, the Governor has proposed furloughing such workers, an illegal action since state law excludes Special Fund workers from these types of job reductions.  The State Compensation Insurance Fund just successfully sued the Governor over this matter.

Perhaps worst of all, the Governor and the Legislature have in recent years used special fund money to balance the budget.  This is EXACTLY what Props. 1D and 1E would have done, moving dedicated funds into the General Fund.  And yet the Governor and a compliant legislature goes ahead and does it anyway when the funds at risk are more murky and have lower-profile champions.  This parallels the Governor, despite failing with Prop. 1A, budgeting a $4.5 billion dollar reserve for the upcoming fiscal year, despite the “rainy day” we’re currently facing, essentially moving forward in violation of the will of the voters with a spending cap.  

Democratic lawmakers are floating a plan to use that projected reserve, but resist augmenting that with new revenues, leading to $19 billion in additional cuts and borrowing from local governments, really a terrible plan considering the alternative options on fees.  The unions are getting impatient with the lack of leadership, and advocacy groups seem more interested not in working with them but just going the heck around them.  This note at the bottom of the LAT piece from Lenny Goldberg is the buried lede:

The next step for unions could be going directly to voters. One labor-backed group, the California Tax Reform Assn., has prepared a possible ballot measure to repeal the three corporate tax cuts Democrats agreed to in the last year to get GOP support for the budget.

“It’s ready to go,” said Lenny Goldberg, the group’s executive director.

Reading the statement from the state employee, which I’ve posted on the flip, gives you some of the reasons why workers feel they have no allies in Sacramento anymore.

I’m a California State Employee and I’m currently working approved overtime in the middle of a state financial crisis.  I work for the Employment Development Department (EDD).   EDD is conducting massive hiring.  In the two months alone, my office alone has hired 30 trainees and is continuing to hire.   This action is allowable because approximately 90% of EDD’s budget is paid directly with federal dollars.   The majority of the remaining balance is paid by seven other special funds.  Only one quarter of a percent derives from the General Fund.

Gov. Schwarzenegger would have Californians believe that all state employees are lumped into one sole classification. In reality, state employees work for departments that fall into one of two categories:   General Fund or Special Funds.

Special Funds Departments budgets are allocated by either self sustaining revenue funded entirely on fees or premiums and/or have been designated for a sole purpose by California Voters or funds from the federal government.  There are 51 state departments whose budgets are derived from the Special Fund.   The current State financial crisis is a General Fund crisis, NOT a Special Fund crisis.    Politicians and the media fail to emphasize the distinction.  They would have you believe that there is one state indistinguishable budget.

For example, The Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, The Department of Community Services and Development, and The State Council on Development Disabilities and are funded entirely out of federal dollars and receive no General Fund dollars. The Department of Motor Vehicles and California Highway Patrol are funded entirely out of special funds.

I and my co-workers are at a loss to understand why the governor is proposing to reduce all state employee salaries by 5%.   His action is illogical.  Special Fund employee salaries are not paid out of the General Fund. This is wasteful management of resources and of personnel.   There is no justification for this action.  Why reduce an employee’s salary when there is no necessity to?   Why continue to hire if the state is in cash flow crisis?  Anyone can review the State Personnel Board’s web site (http://jobs.spb.ca.gov/wvpos/search_p.cfm?showAll ), and can see for themselves that the State is still hiring.  There are currently over 2000 job vacancies with the State of California.

On top of the proposed 5%, the governor implemented a two day furlough for all state employees.  The reality is that I am mandated to report to work on my furlough days to meet public need and not get paid for it. The official policy is that the furlough days are accrued and can be taken at a later date.  However, due to the high work load, requests for time off in exchange for furlough days are denied.   There is a deadline for which all furlough dates must be taken: June 2010.   Use it or lose it.   The California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment have filed a lawsuit on behalf of its Special Fund Employees as being unlawful.  Interested parties can read the brief at    http://www.sacbee.com/static/w…

The lawsuit cites how each department is funded and its impact on the General Fund.

My co-workers and I work overtime to recoup lost hours just to pay for my necessities of life, such as my food and my mortgage. Contrary to popular opinion, the average employee does not make six figures.  In issuing furloughs and the proposed 5% cut, the state increases its budget deficit in that it loses income tax revenue from state workers.

In recent years, the governor and the legislative branch have dipped into the Special Funds Budget to cover the General Fund deficit.  Gov. Schwarzenegger balanced last year’s budget by borrowing $574 million from various special funds.  Where does this money go? How is it repaid? No one truly knows.   Californians rejected his budget measures in the May 19 special election to shift money from special funds for mental health services and early childhood care and education.  Why is this practice still being continued?

On February 5, 2009, The Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Labor Department objected to EDD employees being furloughed since the salaries were primary paid with Federal dollars.   (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/05/business/fi-unemploy5)  The Labor Department notified the governor that the furloughs could impact EDD’s performance in meeting criteria for the timely handling of unemployment claims and appeals.   The Labor Department notified the EDD that failing to comply could violate Social Security laws.   The governor was unmoved.

Similar to 911, this is a game of power and politics.    It is a tactic to instill fear in the general public to justify actions that would not normally be endorsed or approved.   The governor should follow the President Obama’s lead and use a scalpel rather than an ax to make precise cuts.  The governor can not have budget reform without the trust of the people and without providing the state with crucial and vital details of the nature of the budget.

Signed

Employee Proudly Serving the State of California

While Willie Brown reads tea leaves, actual votes are taking place in Sacramento.  And the budget conference committee, in the end, rejected cuts to Cal Grants and Hastings College that the Governor requested.

California took a multimillion-dollar step backward Friday in cutting its budget.

Assembly and Senate members in a budget conference committee balked at derailing the Cal Grant program of college aid or stripping Hastings College of the Law of nearly all its state funding.

By rejecting the two proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, the committee created a new $235 million headache in its bid to fix a gaping fiscal hole.

The panel is rushing to balance the state’s recession-wracked budget by curing a projected $24.3 billion shortfall.

Republicans actually claimed they were against eliminating Cal Grants but wanted to find additional offsets in the budget.  But in the end, they voted to get rid of every aid grant for 77,000 low- and middle-income California students who want to attend an institution of higher learning.  You would think that the Democrats could do something with that.

With respect to Hastings College, the budget committee averted what could have been a costly disaster.

Schwarzenegger’s Hastings proposal would have eliminated about $10.3 million in state funding for the University of California law school, leaving it with only $7,000 in general fund support and $153,000 from lottery revenue.

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, argued Friday that the cut was much deeper than those targeting other UC programs and would raise Hastings’ annual tuition from $28,600 to about $36,600.

Leno said the cut could launch a costly court fight over terms of the law school’s creation, which called for Judge S.C. Hastings to donate $100,000 to support the campus – and for the state to pay his heirs that sum, plus interest, if the state ever abandoned its financial support.

Leno said the governor is attempting to “privatize” the law school, and if the Hastings heirs sued, the state could wind up owing more from 130 years of accumulated interest than it could save from its budget-cutting proposal.

Seriously, did anyone in the Governor’s office even think about the possibility of paying 130 YEARS’ WORTH of accumulated interest on a $100,000 contribution in order to save $10 million, and how those numbers do not compute?

I think you can see where this goes.  The conference committee is not nearly in the mood to accept the most extreme of the Governor’s proposals – I don’t think they’ll tell those AIDS activists in the streets that they can no longer get their drugs, for example.  And then we’ll have a fairly large remaining gap after the committee’s work is done.  The first pot of money the budget committee will attack will be the absurdly large $4.5 billion reserve in the Governor’s plan, essentially ignoring the will of the people not to institute a spending cap and socking away billions of dollars in the middle of a near-depression.  After that, we’re going to see a big fight.  We need to continue to leverage grassroots pressure, wedge Republicans who are  starting to waver on a cuts-only approach, and let Democrats know that they must hold the line on things like eliminating welfare and children’s health care, and incorporate a majority-vote fee increase to make up the difference.  We’re already seeing cracks in the rush to shock doctrine California.  Let’s break it open.

Looks like Darrell Steinberg is hedging his bets on fixing the broken political structure in Sacramento by going to the ballot to protect children’s health coverage:

Days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to abolish the Healthy Families Program (which would entail booting more than 900,000 California kids out of health insurance), Steinberg’s Committee for a New Economy on Monday made a $75,000 contribution to Californians for Children’s Health – a sizable cash infusion for a committee that previously had only about $20,000 in its coffers.

The statement of organization for Californians for Children’s Health says the group – for which a Web site is under construction – exists to support “expansion of children’s health coverage,” and its sponsoring organizations include the Children’s Defense Fund Action Council; the Children’s Partnership, a project of the Tides Center; Children Now; and PICO California. Its CFO is PICO California director Jim Keddy; its secretary is Kelly Hardy, Children Now’s associate director for health.

Hardy earlier today told me Californians for Children’s Health aims to develop a ballot measure for November 2010, and although today’s rapidly changing budget environment makes it hard to say exactly what that measure’s specifics will be, “we’re contemplating new revenue sources that would come in, not General Fund sources, that would support children’s coverage programs.”

Steinberg has a history of going outside General Fund revenues to pay for social services projects – see the millionaire’s tax in Prop. 63, which funds mental health programs.

You need to play within the hand dealt, and voters have shown a willingness to use tax increases to fund specific programs.  Losing the Healthy Families Program would mean 900,000 kids without health care in California, and we would be the only state in the country not accessing federal SCHIP funds.  So obviously, you try to get that revenue absolutely any way you can.

At the same time, is this any way to run a government?  Create a system where no revenues can be raised inside the legislature, forcing stakeholders and politicians to go to voters to look for a dedicated stream here and another dedicated stream there?  This is unsustainable to the nth degree.  We will not transform California one dedicated funding stream at a time.  It just won’t work, and we’ll spend hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants in the process.  Steinberg shouldn’t foreclose the option, of course, but his money would be better spent on reform efforts so that he no longer needs to go to the voters for everything, and we can have a representative democracy such that has worked in America for over 220 years.

Moreover, I fear that Steinberg is setting this fallback plan up assuming that Healthy Families will be either eliminated or gutted in the next couple weeks.  Perhaps the donation to a potential ballot committee is a threat to the Governor; but perhaps it’s a signal that the cuts can come down.  Let’s be clear – in the meantime, while we wait for the results of that election, children will die from a lack of health care coverage.  We have other options – Jean Ross describes some of them beautifully here – and the Democratic legislature should be drawing lines in the sand, not giving up on drastic cuts and making contingencies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s address to the legislature was notable only for its fatuousness.  He demands the destruction of the social safety net in California and pleads that we have “no choice,” while hiding the decisions he made which brought us to this point. He claims that his budget is not “just about cuts,” then offers the same reforms that the voters have time and again rejected, or half-measures like firing groundskeepers (to privatize school responsibilities to low-wage contractors, incidentally).  Evidently, the May 19 special election, which has been massively over-interpreted and interpreted wrongly by the Governor, was supposedly a call to arms against tax increases, but a spending cap and rainy day fund, which were on the ballot and voted down by 66% of the electorate, are still viable ideas.  He drew a line in the sand by calling for the dissolution of the Integrated Waste Management Board, an organization that IS NOT FUNDED WITH ONE PENNY FROM THE GENERAL FUND but instead with fees on garbage collectors.  He talked about spending less per inmate on the prison population but his budget seeks only to get rid of precisely the services, rehabilitation, drug treatment and vocational training, that would lower recidivism rates, unstuff the prisons, and allow us to spend less on their management.  He admitted that money from the sale of surplus property cannot go toward the General Fund, in a fleeting moment of truth, but claims it would lower our debt payments, which is true, but precisely what Arnold has been increases with borrow and spend policies for the last six years.

Of course, Arnold urged swift passage of all his Shock Doctrine proposals, because that’s how it works.  The goal is to give nobody time to think, only to acquiesce in the face of crisis.  Some, like Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, will not put her brain on autopilot, mindful of the Depression that would ensue from an all-cuts budget and the drastic consequences for our economy.

“The Governor’s opening statement that the voters in rejecting the special election measures said, “don’t ask us to solve complex budget issues, that’s your job,” is right,” she said. “He was wrong however in his assertion that Californians want an all cuts solution …We have choices. For instance, restoring the top income tax rate on high wealth incomes of $250,000 and above in place under Republican Governors Pete Wilson and Ronald Reagan would allow us to avoid $4 billion of these cuts. Enacting an oil severance fee on oil drilled in California, revenue collected by every state and country in the world that produces significant amounts of oil, could avoid another $1 billion in cuts.

“The Governor talked of us acting courageously. Acting courageously is looking at all alternatives and making smart, rational choices that lessen the cuts with some sensible new revenues,” she said.

Noreen Evans, similarly, has stepped up, at least rhetorically, to offer a counter-weight to the Governor’s Shock Doctrine tactics:

SACRAMENTO – Santa Rosa Assemblywoman Noreen Evans is emerging as one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fiercest critics, a noteworthy development given her prominent role in the high-stakes back-and-forth over the state budget crisis […]

“I don’t know what the point of that exercise was, really,” the Democrat said immediately after the speech as she stood outside the Assembly chambers.

Schwarzenegger told Assembly and Senate lawmakers that he has “faith in our ability to once again come together for the good of the state.”

But Evans said the governor was not helpful “at all” in bridging the divide between Republican and Democrat lawmakers. Rather, she labeled Schwarzenegger’s approach to budget matters as one of “shock and awe.”

“It’s working because it’s shocking, and it’s awesome, and it’s terrible,” she said.

While there are some voices in the Legislature creating pushback, my experience is that the Democrats fall in line with their leadership (same with the Yacht Party, actually; it’s practically a Parliamentary system).  And given the clear signs from Bass and Steinberg to bend over backwards to enable Arnold’s proposals and get it done quickly, I think the only way to halt this forward march would be to mass support inside the Capitol around specific proposals.  For instance, the California Budget Project today released a report about the $2.5 billion corporate tax cuts included in recent budgets in September 2008 and February 2009, cuts we certainly cannot afford in this economic climate.  If everyone must share in the pain, as the Governor said, that must mean something. And so these $2.5 billion in corporate giveaways ought to be repealed.  Period.  Full stop.  Here are some of the gems from these tax breaks:

Nine corporations, dubbed the “lucky nine” in the CBP’s analysis, will receive tax cuts averaging $33.1 million each in 2013-14 due to the adoption of the elective single sales factor apportionment, according to estimates by the Franchise Tax Board.

Eighty percent of the benefits of elective single sales factor apportionment will go to the 0.1 percent of California corporations with gross incomes over $1 billion.

Six corporations will receive tax cuts averaging $23.5 million each in 2013-14 from the adoption of credit sharing.

Eighty-seven percent of the benefits of credit sharing will go to the 0.03 percent of California corporations with gross incomes over $1 billion.

Are there 27 Democrats in the Assembly, or 14 in the Senate, willing to go to the mat to force the repeal of these unnecessary corporate giveaways, providing revenue that can go to the poor, the sick, the infirm, the elderly?  Rank and file Democrats never think to show their power in these negotiations.  In a time of crisis, they should – and force the Governor toward a more equitable solution.  Richard Holober’s post, which I referenced earlier, closes with this:

It’s time to re-unite a fractured progressive movement – based on hope, not fear. We need leadership that can think beyond the imminent crisis, reach out to build a coalition, and organize for budget justice. Labor and community based activist organizations must supply the leadership.

Let’s mobilize behind broadly supported values: require corporations to pay their fair share of taxes; increase the progressivity of our tax system; and eliminate undemocratic super-majority budget and tax rules that give a handful of reactionary politicians a stranglehold over funding our schools, health and public safety services. The campaign may take years. We can win, but first we need to get out of the budget crisis bunker.

Which politicians will enable us to escape that bunker?

Apologies to Russell from Fat Albert, but in this case I mean that literally.

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday it is canceling the bulk of its summer school programs, the latest in a statewide wave of cutbacks expected to leave hundreds of thousands of students struggling for classes.

The reductions, which will force many parents to scramble for child care, are the most tangible effect of the multibillion-dollar state financial cuts to education. Community colleges also have announced summer program cancellations.

Bridge learning has a direct throughline to academic achievement, and in the long run, the value of getting an at-risk youth a high school diploma far outweighs short-term spending.  But of course, summer-school programs extend beyond make-up classes for students behind the curve, but also playground and pool programs which keep kids out of trouble and off the streets.  In other words, the very kind of after-school programs that the Governor championed before he took office.

Of course, this is in line with Arnold 3.0’s Hooverist approach to education – cutting grants, raising fees.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to dismantle the Cal Grant program would make California the first state in the recession-battered nation to eliminate student financial aid while raising college tuition, experts said this week.

“Other states are cutting back, but not a complete phase-out,” said Haley Chitty, communications director for the National Assn. of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

The governor’s proposal would end all new Cal Grants, eventually eliminating the state’s main financial aid program for college students, and prevent existing awards from increasing. Grants awarded to 118,000 freshmen starting college in the fall would be canceled, as well as hikes in 82,255 continuing awards promised when the University of California and California State University raised fees this month by 10% and 9.3%, respectively.

Cal Grants awards focus on the lower-income population.  That’s on whom this budget is being balanced.

Arnold will deliver a joint address to the legislature this week.  I’d rather that be a joint address to all public school students.  Explain this to them.

I just appeared on KPFA with Eric Klein to talk about the Governor’s proposed budget cuts, along with several experts and stakeholders, including friend of Calitics Anthony Wright of Health Access California.  I agree with him that it’s almost hard to fathom the amount and severity of the cuts proposed for health care, especially at a time with the federal government is moving forward with a “do or die” plan to reform the health care market, increase access and lower costs.  The proposed Governor Hoover cuts would have the exact opposite effect, and the people gravely impacted by this will not have the luxury of waiting around for the Feds to catch up and fill in the gaps.

Two recent CBP fact sheets help break down the Governor’s proposed cuts to Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, in numbers that are easier to grasp. These fact sheets show:

More than 940,000 California children would lose health coverage if the Healthy Families Program is eliminated as the Governor proposes. More than 240,000 children in Los Angeles county alone would be affected. Want to know how many children would be impacted in your county? Check out the fact sheet to see.

In total, more than 1.9 million Californians could lose access to health coverage within three years through proposed reductions to the Medi-Cal Program and elimination of Healthy Families.

As the Governor said himself today, “behind every one of those dollars that we cut there are real faces.”

Kudos to the LA Times, by the way, for allowing the great unmentionable to get printed on their pages – the decisions made in Sacramento will truly be the difference between life and death for many Californians.

Schwarzenegger argues that the state’s declining economy and plummeting tax revenues have boxed California into a corner, forcing deep and historic cuts in the health and welfare programs that form the state’s social safety net. Without those tough measures, he says, California will cartwheel toward insolvency.

But a 10-person legislative budget panel, which is reviewing the governor’s proposals, listened during a long day in a crowded hearing room to scores of people who said their survival depends on programs set to be hit by the budget ax.

They heard from mothers of children with autism, representatives of people on dialysis, poor parents whose children see dentists on the government’s dime, former drug abusers set straight by a state rehab program.

And they heard from a woman named Lynnea Garbutt who has lived with AIDS all of her 24 years.

She has survived with the help of a state program that provides the expensive antiviral drugs she takes. Now, with that program facing elimination, she pleaded with lawmakers to save it — and her life.

“If these cuts take place, you’re not just cutting money from the program — you’re cutting my life,” she told the panel, her voice shaking and tears falling. “I choose to live. Please don’t make me die. My choice is life.”

This is how Yacht Partier Chuck DeVore responded – move out of the state.  Love it or leave it!

The cuts made to programs like Healthy Families (California’s SCHIP) would eliminate federal matching funds and double or triple the scope of the cuts.  And it would be one thing, by the way, if the Yacht Party simply held the line and said “we can’t afford it.”  But no, they want to spend billions of dollars, only on their own projects instead of saving human lives.

In this article in the San Diego Union Tribune, the same Republicans (and Republican governor) who would eliminate children’s health care and basic services for the neediest Californians, actually want the state to pony up the money for a water bond.

Schwarzenegger, says the article, is still fixated on a whopping $10 billion bond. And Senate Republicans are right there with him:

“Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto, the lead Republican on water issues, agreed. “It’s obviously a tough time to bring it forward, but we can’t wait,” the article notes.

We can’t wait? According to my calculator, If the entire $10 billion was sold together, the interest payment could be in the neighborhood of $660 million annually. That’s $660 million more that would have to come out of  schools, health care, and other items on the chopping block.

Similarly, the Yacht Party cried poor about programs that help people, but made room in the February budget for a huge corporate tax cut.

Everyone who has spent 10 seconds on this recognizes that there’s no good way to use current revenues to provide the basic level of services Californians deserve.  To the extent that I have hope that we will overcome the selfishness of the cruel and the impossibility of navigating a broken system, it comes from people, who are fed up and starving for leadership and change from a government that no longer serves their interests.  To turn the figurative starvation literal, Los Angeles teachers are going on a hunger strike to protest budget cuts.  We’re all hungry, and we’ll be a lot hungrier if Governor Hoover has his way.

Robert makes quick work of the new and not improved Gov. Schwarzenegger prescriptions for disaster, trying to fill an entire $21 billion dollar deficit (which is now more like $24 billion according to the Legislative Analyst) with cuts.  I cannot completely argue with the decision to cancel the RAW (revenue anticipation warrants), because bad borrow and spend policies, as Noreen Evans explained, part of the problem in Sacramento, not the solution (“Like paying your bills with your credit card when you don’t have the money to afford it.”)

But to replace that entirely with cuts to things like CalWorks, Cal Grants and Healthy Families would place a massive hole in the social safety net.  This would, for example, roll back children’s health coverage at the moment that the federal government would expand it.  And nobody ought to look forward to being the only state without emergency poison control services.

This is going to get worse, by the way.  The offshore drilling plan Arnold proposed lost a key environmental supporter this week, threatening that $1.8 billion solution.  And Tim Geithner’s apparent suggestion that loan guarantees require an act of Congress, while immaterial to the budget at this point, really hinders the ability to solve the short-term cash crunch.  Basically the entire budget would have to get passed before one dime of borrowing could take place, otherwise the borrowing is unlikely to even happen, and even when it does it will be prohibitively expensive.

So, what to do?  I think Greg Lucas is on to something.  It’s time to embarrass Governor Hoover.  Put his bill on the floor and watch it get a half-dozen votes.

Bringing the GOP governor’s plan to a vote accomplishes several things.

It establishes how many initial votes exist for the plan. Not many, presumably. Will Republicans vote for it or are the cuts too deep even for them? Or should they choose to dismiss the action as a “drill” and not participate, an opportunity is presented for Democrats to score some coup on their political opponents.

A somewhat simplistic example: “All we hear from Republicans is that they want to cut state spending. Well, here’s a chance to do so and yet they sit on their hands.”

Bringing the proposal to a vote also attracts the media spotlight. Parents might be interested to know about the $6.3 billion in payments to public schools the governor would defer for one year, a figure that doesn’t include the $8 billion the state already owes schools.

What the plan does to immigrants, the developmentally disabled, the elderly who receive in-home care also might be of interest to the public which so recently decided to make the fiscal problem worse.

The public might also like to know that $12 billion of the governor’s $21 billion worth of actions are one-time and that embracing them makes it harder to solve future budget messes.  

Essentially, it’s time to build a set of facts and put people on the record.  There has to be some long-term thinking here, and some public explanation of the implications of a Hoover-like budget.  Like there was no reason for Democrats to play nice with George Bush when he was at 28% in the polls, there similarly is no reason to play nice with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He is basically despised.  

Time to kick sand in the face of the bully.

Virtually the entire political leadership in Sacramento took without questioning the view that the overwhelming loss of the special election is somehow a mandate for “living within our means” and deep, drastic cuts to the budget.  The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times (in multiple venues) and most other publications provided uncritical coverage of the Governor and even leading Democrats, parroting this theory that “the voters spoke” and the message was that only cuts would be allowable from this point forward.

Beware of any sentence that starts with the words “What the voters told us was…”  Far too often in our politics, dishonest lawmakers decide that voters mandate their particular ideologies and preferred policy decisions regardless of the facts.  Perhaps the only real message delivered from the voters to lawmakers was that the former doesn’t particularly like or trust the latter.  But there are other possibilities.  A new polling memo by David Binder Research details why Prop. 1A in particular failed, and the results do not match the Governor’s ramblings.

Contrary to what the Governor is saying after the defeat of his proposals, Prop 1A did not fail because voters delivered a message to “go all out” in cutting government spending. The all-time record low turnout for a statewide special election clearly demonstrates the lack of depth to that argument. Prop 1A did not

generate a spike in turnout and taxes were not cited as the main reason why voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop 1A.  Support for a state budget that relies solely on spending cuts is very limited – even among those voting no on Prop 1a.  

Voters in this election were more likely to be Republicans and less likely to be Independents, whereas Democratic voters came out in proportions consistent with past turnout. Of those that voted in this election, 43% were Democrats, 42% were Republicans and 15% were Independents or minor party voters. This past November, the electorate consisted of 46% Democrats, 32% Republicans and 22% Independents or minor party voters.  

In November 2010, the electorate will be a group that is more supportive of the revenue options tested in the survey, and more strongly opposed to only using cuts to balance the state budget. While only 36% of voters that turned out for the May 19th election supported using entirely budget cuts to balance the budget, even fewer – only 24% — of non-voters felt the same way […]

Voters simply do not trust the leadership in Sacramento, and recognize that the failed special election was just another example of the inability to bring real solutions to voters. When given two choices, four out of five voters – even among those who voted ‘Yes’ on 1A – agreed that the special election was just another example of the failure of the Governor and Legislature, who should make the hard decisions necessary to really fix the budget. Only 20% agreed the special election was a sincere effort to fix the state’s budget mess.

I would argue that the voters feel no trust in the legislature because they see time and again policy solutions that stick the average Californian with the bill that the wealthy and well-connected don’t pay.  The fact that the only permanent tax issue in the February budget was a $1 billion dollar tax cut for the largest corporations in America is a perfect example.

The polling memo also shows broad support for tax increases in a variety of areas, including wiping out this massive corporate tax cut:

75% support increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (62% support among ‘No’ voters)

74% support increasing taxes on tobacco (62% support among ‘No’ voters)

73% support imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing

state (60% support among ‘No’ voters)

63% support closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of

new property they purchase (58% support among ‘No’ voters)

63% support increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to

10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for

families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (51% support among ‘No’ voters)

59% support prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the

taxes they owe (55% support among ‘No’ voters)

In addition, voters oppose the kind of spending cuts outlined by the Governor.

Now, I’m sure I’ll hear “eat it, you pipe dream librul hippie” because of the structural issues that prohibit these kind of tax solutions.  But the reason that the legislature has such desperately low esteem right now is that they fail to publicly even advocate for the solutions Californians plainly want, or the breakage of the structural barriers that would provide it.  This failure caused the May 19 debacle and will cause further problems for the Democrats in the state if they are not careful.  A political party seen as devoid of principle will not be a successful political party forever.  What Californians desire, essentially, is leadership.  And they will punish those who refuse to give it to them.

UPDATE by Brian: I’ve posted the slides for the Binder Research presentation over the flip.

Why Prop 1A Lost Powerpoint –