{"id":10116,"date":"2009-09-22T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-09-22T02:10:23","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T02:10:23","slug":"fixing-the-supermajorities-budget-taxes-or-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/09\/22\/fixing-the-supermajorities-budget-taxes-or-both\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing the Supermajorities: Budget, Taxes or Both?"},"content":{"rendered":"

MediaNews has a story<\/a> about the grassroots\/institutional divide over the question of how to challenge the supermajorities.
\n<\/p>\n

A split between Democratic activists and the political pros who run the party may be growing over how to approach the issue that has bedeviled the party for years: the two-thirds vote required to pass taxes and budgets in the Legislature.
\n
Most Democrats in the upper echelons of the party apparatus are convinced it’s a fool’s errand to try to persuade voters to hand the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes. Instead, they’re gearing up for a campaign next year to lower the threshold – from two-thirds of both legislative bodies to a simple majority – on budget votes only, a path they believe voters can embrace.
\n
But some grass roots liberals say they’re frustrated with the caution of party leaders and believe, if sold right, voters would hand over both taxing and budgeting powers to the majority party. (CoCo Times 9\/21\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure this is totally accurate.  Not all elected Democrats agree with the assesment of what has been called by some as the institutional position.  Specifically, at the Progressive Caucus breakout groups, Sen. Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Asm. Torrico (D-Fremont), disagreed on this subject.  Sen. Hancock took the so-called institutional position of challenging the budget side, and then moving on to revenue.  Asm. Torrico said you have to do both at one time.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to point out the CA-Majority-Rule website<\/a> that was organized by Susie Shannon and Deana Igelsrud, and their effort to organize funding for a poll based on the work of Berkeley professor George Lakoff. (Incidentally, you can donate here<\/a>) The poll will probably yield some interesting data, but I think the question of viability misses the gorilla in the room.<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n
\n
Budget\/ Taxes<\/TD>
\n 		Budget 2\/3<\/TD>
\n 		Budget Majority<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n
Revenue 2\/3<\/TD>
\n 		Status quo<\/b>: Parties get to blame each other and we keep on fighting a losing battle.<\/TD>
\n 		Democrats are stuck with accountability for bad budgets during revenue declines without control of the tax structure<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n
Revenue Majority<\/TD>
\n 		Not going to happen: nobody is going to put this situation on the ballot and it wouldn’t pass<\/TD>
\n 		Optimal<\/b>: Democrats get to sink or swim.  We have the majorities; under this plan we get to see how Democrats would really govern.<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n<\/TABLE>Specifically, I think it is clear that a measure to get majority rule on the budget will be a lot easier victory.  However, the question is whether a world where we have complete power over the budget without revenue authority is a good thing for Democrats.  I’ve even made a little matrix (–>) Because with power, comes accountability, whether justified or not.  So, as it stands, neither party has complete authority over the budget. And thus, each party can point the finger at the other for portions of the budget that are unpopular.<\/p>\n

But what happens when we win just the budget measure? Sure, we’ll get a heck of a lot more authority over the budget.  Policy wise, that’s a really good thing.  But politics wise, you have to wonder if that’s really so great.  When the cuts are made, guess who gets the “credit” (aka, electoral anvil)? Yup, we get left holding the bag for the mess, without the tools to fix it.  Seems like a bit of Pyrrhic victory to me.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason why the Constitutional Convention idea is so appealing: the entire system is messed up, and far past the point of one fix having anything than a minor difference in how the system functions as a whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MediaNews has a story<\/a> about the grassroots\/institutional divide over the question of how to challenge the supermajorities.
\n<\/p>\n

A split between Democratic activists and the political pros who run the party may be growing over how to approach the issue that has bedeviled the party for years: the two-thirds vote required to pass taxes and budgets in the Legislature.
\n
Most Democrats in the upper echelons of the party apparatus are convinced it’s a fool’s errand to try to persuade voters to hand the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes. Instead, they’re gearing up for a campaign next year to lower the threshold – from two-thirds of both legislative bodies to a simple majority – on budget votes only, a path they believe voters can embrace.
\n
But some grass roots liberals say they’re frustrated with the caution of party leaders and believe, if sold right, voters would hand over both taxing and budgeting powers to the majority party. (CoCo Times 9\/21\/09<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure this is totally accurate.  Not all elected Democrats agree with the assesment of what has been called by some as the institutional position.  Specifically, at the Progressive Caucus breakout groups, Sen. Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Asm. Torrico (D-Fremont), disagreed on this subject.  Sen. Hancock took the so-called institutional position of challenging the budget side, and then moving on to revenue.  Asm. Torrico said you have to do both at one time.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to point out the CA-Majority-Rule website<\/a> that was organized by Susie Shannon and Deana Igelsrud, and their effort to organize funding for a poll based on the work of Berkeley professor George Lakoff. (Incidentally, you can donate here<\/a>) The poll will probably yield some interesting data, but I think the question of viability misses the gorilla in the room.<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n
\n
Budget\/ Taxes<\/TD>
\n 		Budget 2\/3<\/TD>
\n 		Budget Majority<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n
Revenue 2\/3<\/TD>
\n 		Status quo<\/b>: Parties get to blame each other and we keep on fighting a losing battle.<\/TD>
\n 		Democrats are stuck with accountability for bad budgets during revenue declines without control of the tax structure<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n
Revenue Majority<\/TD>
\n 		Not going to happen: nobody is going to put this situation on the ballot and it wouldn’t pass<\/TD>
\n 		Optimal<\/b>: Democrats get to sink or swim.  We have the majorities; under this plan we get to see how Democrats would really govern.<\/TD>
\n<\/TR>
\n<\/TABLE>Specifically, I think it is clear that a measure to get majority rule on the budget will be a lot easier victory.  However, the question is whether a world where we have complete power over the budget without revenue authority is a good thing for Democrats.  I’ve even made a little matrix (–>) Because with power, comes accountability, whether justified or not.  So, as it stands, neither party has complete authority over the budget. And thus, each party can point the finger at the other for portions of the budget that are unpopular.<\/p>\n

But what happens when we win just the budget measure? Sure, we’ll get a heck of a lot more authority over the budget.  Policy wise, that’s a really good thing.  But politics wise, you have to wonder if that’s really so great.  When the cuts are made, guess who gets the “credit” (aka, electoral anvil)? Yup, we get left holding the bag for the mess, without the tools to fix it.  Seems like a bit of Pyrrhic victory to me.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason why the Constitutional Convention idea is so appealing: the entire system is messed up, and far past the point of one fix having anything than a minor difference in how the system functions as a whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[3366,3176],"class_list":["post-10116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-3366","tag-3176"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Da","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}