Well, they were right:
Nearly three dozen bills stalled on the Senate floor last month amid a personal clash between the two Senate leaders. Hollingsworth has implied that Steinberg reneged on earlier promises to strip funding from the state's free tax filing system, Ready Return, and make changes to state sales tax law.
Steinberg denies ever making any promises about those issues to Hollingsworth. And Democrats did not make any changes to Ready Return or the single-sales factor issue this week.
So what changed?
In the end, it was a matter of politics. A bill to give tax credits to homebuyers, sponsored by Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, was killed. In its place Wednesay, the identical language was amended into a new bill, SB 3x 37, authored by Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield. (CapitolWeekly 10/15/09)
Of all the things that can bring about compromise, it was the giveaway to the homebuilders. While I don't begrudge Anna Caballero her win, whether acknowledged or not, the homebuyers tax credit wasn't so exciting. Of all the things that got blocked because of Intuit's temper tantrum, the homebuyer's tax credit was essentially a big giveaway to big homebuilders at the expense of regular Californians trying to sell their homes.
Here's the quick story on this bill. Basically, it gives a tax credit in the amount of several thousand dollars for purchasers of new homes. Not homes that are being resold, but of new homes. That's all well and good for the home builders, but if you are trying to sell your (old/used) home you are now at a competitive disadvantage to the new homes.
At a time of economic peril, there just seem to be a lot better ways to stimulate the economy. Heck, you could probably drop dollar bills over the state from an airplane and get a better multiplier effect on that money.
One other question for our legislators, do real voters really care about who's name is on what bill? No, they care about what the legislators did, and how they pushed the issues they cared about. The legislators can still document their work on the bill and still discuss it on the campaign trail, and few voters are really going to look up who the author was. Let's try focusing on something that matters please? |
