{"id":13613,"date":"2011-06-23T20:41:36","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T20:41:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-06-23T20:41:36","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T20:41:36","slug":"on-john-chiang-and-the-balanced-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/23\/on-john-chiang-and-the-balanced-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"On John Chiang and the “Balanced” Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s set aside one notion at the front.  Prop 25, the majority vote measure, probably could have won without the legislative pay issue.  I suppose reasonable minds could differ on that one, but given the way the rest of the night went in California, and the weakness of the opposing campaign, it probably passes with or without punishing the legislature.  But, that is speculation at this point, and those who drafted it faced some very serious questions that the legislative pay provision addressed.  So, Prop 25 carried a provision that punishes the legislature for not passing a budget on time.<\/p>\n

Of course, the word “balanced” has been read in there by John Chiang.  From the perspective of the long-term power of the Controller’s office, it is something of a boon.  From the perspective of a legislature able to follow their conscience during some rough times, perhaps not so great.  <\/p>\n

And, as George Skelton points out in his column today, it might not even be that good of politics.  Sure, kicking the legislature is always a fun sport, but it’s never so simple:<\/p>\n

State Controller John Chiang’s conclusion that the gimmicky budget passed by the Legislature and vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t merit legislative paychecks heaped pressure on the lawmakers to quickly pass an honest spending plan. Absent a sudden Republican epiphany on taxes, that almost certainly will result in more sharp cuts to public schools.<\/p>\n

That, in turn, will infuriate the teachers unions whose financial backing Chiang will need if he ever tries to run for governor. State employees unions also will be livid if there are deeper program cuts and layoffs. (LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Overnight, Chiang has gone from being the guy who stood up on behalf of state workers to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to being the guy who helped to enable a nasty budget.  That won’t do any good for your popularity in the general session of a CDP convention.<\/p>\n

But, there’s something else here.  Kicking the legislature, especially the Democrats that tried to pass some sort of real-world budget (well…almost).  Thing is that while some of the Legislators can afford to be without a month of pay, this will be a serious strain on others.  Whether they would be willing to put their name on a lawsuit is another question, but this sort of thing matters.  Their salaries have already gone done by almost a quarter over the last few years, and this adds insult to injury.<\/p>\n

The pay provisions might make a budget happen sooner, but how much do you want to bet who gets pushed more on this.  Democrats need every vote, while only a few Republicans need to vote yes.  The pay provision will only push us towards a scary cuts-only budget faster.  Demonizing the Legislature is fun, but in the end, counter-productive.  We need a legislature with the strength to stand up to bad budgets and not be forced to agree to something on the basis of their mortgage payments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s set aside one notion at the front.  Prop 25, the majority vote measure, probably could have won without the legislative pay issue.  I suppose reasonable minds could differ on that one, but given the way the rest of the night went in California, and the weakness of the opposing campaign, it probably passes with or without punishing the legislature.  But, that is speculation at this point, and those who drafted it faced some very serious questions that the legislative pay provision addressed.  So, Prop 25 carried a provision that punishes the legislature for not passing a budget on time.<\/p>\n

Of course, the word “balanced” has been read in there by John Chiang.  From the perspective of the long-term power of the Controller’s office, it is something of a boon.  From the perspective of a legislature able to follow their conscience during some rough times, perhaps not so great.  <\/p>\n

And, as George Skelton points out in his column today, it might not even be that good of politics.  Sure, kicking the legislature is always a fun sport, but it’s never so simple:<\/p>\n

State Controller John Chiang’s conclusion that the gimmicky budget passed by the Legislature and vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t merit legislative paychecks heaped pressure on the lawmakers to quickly pass an honest spending plan. Absent a sudden Republican epiphany on taxes, that almost certainly will result in more sharp cuts to public schools.<\/p>\n

That, in turn, will infuriate the teachers unions whose financial backing Chiang will need if he ever tries to run for governor. State employees unions also will be livid if there are deeper program cuts and layoffs. (LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Overnight, Chiang has gone from being the guy who stood up on behalf of state workers to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to being the guy who helped to enable a nasty budget.  That won’t do any good for your popularity in the general session of a CDP convention.<\/p>\n

But, there’s something else here.  Kicking the legislature, especially the Democrats that tried to pass some sort of real-world budget (well…almost).  Thing is that while some of the Legislators can afford to be without a month of pay, this will be a serious strain on others.  Whether they would be willing to put their name on a lawsuit is another question, but this sort of thing matters.  Their salaries have already gone done by almost a quarter over the last few years, and this adds insult to injury.<\/p>\n

The pay provisions might make a budget happen sooner, but how much do you want to bet who gets pushed more on this.  Democrats need every vote, while only a few Republicans need to vote yes.  The pay provision will only push us towards a scary cuts-only budget faster.  Demonizing the Legislature is fun, but in the end, counter-productive.  We need a legislature with the strength to stand up to bad budgets and not be forced to agree to something on the basis of their mortgage payments.<\/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":[8881],"class_list":["post-13613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-8881"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3xz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13613","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=13613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}