California is bankrupt and only large cuts to government spending can save the day. In order to make these cuts, the governor will have to lock horns with the public sector unions and force them to back down. Unfortunately for California, Jerry Brown is a tool of the unions – from Daniel Weintraub over at HealthyCal:
…The Republicans want a spending limit, pension reform and regulatory relief for business, among other things.
But Brown and his Democratic allies have come under intense pressure from interest groups, especially the public employee unions, to oppose any spending limits or changes to the pension system. This has led to a recurrence of the same kind of partisan frustration and name-calling that has marked past budget stalemates, and which Brown promised to avoid.
The governor, for instance, has called Republicans “disloyal to California” for refusing to put his tax plan on the ballot. A handful of Republicans who were negotiating with the governor, meanwhile, threw up their hands earlier this week and said the negotiations were going nowhere because Brown refused to cross his public employee union supporters…
While Democrats can pass whatever budget they want – holding both the legislative and executive branches – they cannot pass a tax increase without GOP approval. A 2/3 vote in favor is required for a tax increase – or for a tax increase to be sent to the people in the form of a referendum. Right now, the California GOP is standing firm – and there is no upside for the GOP in helping the Democrats out of their jam.
Decades of extreme liberalism – even when Republicans were governor – in California has bankrupted the State. Only a dose of free market conservatism can fix things. The people of California were asked to endorse such a course last November but chose, instead, to elect Jerry Brown to go along with their liberal legislature. Putting back in to the Governor’s mansion the very man who instigated a lot of the liberal profligacy back in the 70’s didn’t seem like a wise idea to me…but I guess that the merest chance that the GOPer hadn’t been nice to the hired help trumped such considerations for the voters of California. Californians have got what they wanted – and I’d like to ask them: now, how does it taste?
Let them stew – let the liberals who bankrupted the State fix the problem. Yes, I know they can’t – not unless they turn on a dime and start enacted conservative, free market policies. But that they are too stupid and rigidly ideological to do what is sensible isn’t my problem – nor is it the problem of the Republicans of California (except in the fact, of course, that they have to live in a State governed by liberals). Perhaps when things really fall apart – and they will – the people of California will awake from their liberal stupor and start to think before voting?
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