 Mark Leno, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, called out Republicans today on the anti-tax pledge:
Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, vice chairman of the Senate budget committee, said it was unfair that Republicans had to vote on cuts without knowing what other ideas Democrats are working on.
That prompted a sharp response from Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the committee. He suggested that Republicans face no choice but to vote for all of Brown's cuts since most GOP legislators have signed no-tax pledges.
"It's second grade math, balancing this budget," Leno said. "It's addition and subtraction. You've already taken addition off the table, so it's actually a given that you're going to accept every one of the cuts."
"But we, because we are not signing pledges taking either addition or subtraction off the table, are here to massage this and see how we can soften some of the edges," he added. "You don't have that option because you abrogated that opportunity before you even got here."(SacBee)
Aww, it must be hard to not be informed what cuts they are going to vote on. On the flip side, they still have yet to actually propose any cuts, so there's that.
On the more practical side, Sen. Leno and his colleagues concurred with the Governor on most of his cuts. However, they did block a couple. Most notably, they killed the proposal to cap Medi-Cal patients at 10 appointments per year. |
