With an uber-liberal governor and an uber-liberal Legislature, the normal course of events would be to just hike taxes to cover the budget shortfall…but California requires a 2/3 vote in the Legislature to raise taxes…and the liberals are just shy of that sort of majority:
California’s Senate Republicans blocked Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to erase a $10 billion deficit as closed-door talks remain snagged on his demand for higher taxes as a deadline to pass a budget looms.
Republicans oppose the governor’s proposal because it would extend tax and fee increases set to end June 30. The so-called bridge tax would preserve the revenue measures pending the outcome of a voter referendum, planned for September or later, to keep them for five years. Republicans said the extensions would harm California’s economy. Brown said he doesn’t want to raise taxes without voter support.
“The Democrats have moved the goal post,” Senator Bob Huff, the Budget Committee’s Republican vice chairman, said in a telephone interview. “Now they are saying they need the taxes and then they will let the voters decide. But if the voters say ‘no,’ they still get stuck with another nine months of taxes.”…
Recent polling shows that Californians are not willing to raise taxes on themselves via ballot initiative…so, the Democrats will just have to find $10 billion more to cut. Naturally, they’ll say that this means junior will starve and granny will be kicked out on the street…but the reality is that California’s bloated, over-paid bureaucracy will just have to be slashed. The funny thing about this is that the Republicans are doing things which will allow Jerry Brown to be a successful governor…if he agrees to the GOP plan (which is not just for no new taxes, but also various pension and regulatory reform) then California will start to get back on track. Employment will increase, revenues will flow in to the government and everything will work out well…and Jerry Brown will be hailed as a genius for it.
Ah, well, we can’t have everything. It was GOP policies which rescued Clinton in the 90’s but the nation did benefit from it, even though we got stuck with Clinton for an extra four years. The good news here is that Brown is already 73 – perhaps he won’t run again in 2014…
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