| Governor Jerry Brown released his budget plan yesterday. It's no surprise that Brown is mixing cuts and revenues, but the overall thing has an air of disappointment to it, particularly the fact that he proposes to extend the February 2009 taxes and not seek more fundamental reforms, such as restoring the Wilson-era upper income tax brackets or seeking an oil severance tax.
Brown also is proposing some ugly cuts, and is suggesting these may be permanent. The social services cuts resemble those that Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently proposed, although Brown is thankfully not suggesting anything like eliminating CalWORKS, as Arnold did. The proposed cuts drew concern from Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project:
However, the Governor also proposes deep cuts that will weaken the public structures that many Californians rely on, including CalWORKs, the state's highly successful welfare-to-work program; state- assisted child care for families struggling to make ends meet; Medi-Cal, a state-federal health insurance program; and the Healthy Families Program, which helps families purchase affordable health coverage for their children.
Protecting our core public systems and structures is essential for securing a prosperous future and paving the way for an economic recovery. Lawmakers and voters should examine the Governor's proposals in the context of what they mean not just for the next 12 months, but also five, 10, and 20 years in the future.
Ross did praise Brown for adopting a "balanced" approach to the budget, seeing new revenues as a core element of the solution instead of as a small and grudging concession, as did Arnold Schwarzenegger, fueled as he was by an ideologically anti-tax attitude. But the proposed cuts will have lasting negative consequences that will be devastating to the safety net, and therefore, to the ability to produce lasting and sustainable economic recovery.
It's regrettable, but not surprising, that Brown still sees value in austerity, even if it's to be balanced out by some new revenues. The Brown Administration projects a possible $3 billion surplus by 2013-14 if the revenue increases are approved, and while that might be a pathway to restoring some of the cuts, he's much more likely to want to hoard it (which would be as stupid an idea as it was in the late '70s) or to use it to pay down debt.
The shift of money and responsibility to counties will be very, very interesting and has to be watched closely to ensure this doesn't become a license to red counties to misuse the money and screw people who need services. And the fight over the redevelopment agencies will be a massive battle, as they have well-funded allies who won't go down quietly.
Still, it seems worth mounting a fight for the new revenues anyway, especially if they are presented to voters in a "clean" form, not weighed down by right-wing trojan horses as was Prop 1A in May 2009.
Governor Brown's political instincts have never been radical. He has always believed in taking the electorate as it was (or at least as he thought it was), instead of trying to move voters toward a new political understanding. In that way he shares a lot with President Obama, who also counsels Democrats to accept a supposed reality of a center-right electorate and to be content with incremental gains.
There's no doubt that much in Brown's budget has the potential to dramatically reshape California government, and to help provide some stability to public services. At the same time, Brown has again shown his cautious and conservative (in the sense of being unwilling to rock the boat) instincts with this budget. In the end, I have to agree with those who have called Brown's budget a missed opportunity. It's better than what we'd have gotten with Meg Whitman, of course, but it shows progressives that they still have work to do in order to reshape the discussion of programs and revenues in Sacramento, even as we work to get voter approval for the spring initiatives. |
