Virtually the entire political leadership in Sacramento took without questioning the view that the overwhelming loss of the special election is somehow a mandate for "living within our means" and deep, drastic cuts to the budget. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times (in multiple venues) and most other publications provided uncritical coverage of the Governor and even leading Democrats, parroting this theory that "the voters spoke" and the message was that only cuts would be allowable from this point forward.
Beware of any sentence that starts with the words "What the voters told us was..." Far too often in our politics, dishonest lawmakers decide that voters mandate their particular ideologies and preferred policy decisions regardless of the facts. Perhaps the only real message delivered from the voters to lawmakers was that the former doesn't particularly like or trust the latter. But there are other possibilities. A new polling memo by David Binder Research details why Prop. 1A in particular failed, and the results do not match the Governor's ramblings.
Contrary to what the Governor is saying after the defeat of his proposals, Prop 1A did not fail because voters delivered a message to "go all out" in cutting government spending. The all-time record low turnout for a statewide special election clearly demonstrates the lack of depth to that argument. Prop 1A did not
generate a spike in turnout and taxes were not cited as the main reason why voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop 1A. Support for a state budget that relies solely on spending cuts is very limited - even among those voting no on Prop 1a.
Voters in this election were more likely to be Republicans and less likely to be Independents, whereas Democratic voters came out in proportions consistent with past turnout. Of those that voted in this election, 43% were Democrats, 42% were Republicans and 15% were Independents or minor party voters. This past November, the electorate consisted of 46% Democrats, 32% Republicans and 22% Independents or minor party voters.
In November 2010, the electorate will be a group that is more supportive of the revenue options tested in the survey, and more strongly opposed to only using cuts to balance the state budget. While only 36% of voters that turned out for the May 19th election supported using entirely budget cuts to balance the budget, even fewer - only 24% -- of non-voters felt the same way [...]
Voters simply do not trust the leadership in Sacramento, and recognize that the failed special election was just another example of the inability to bring real solutions to voters. When given two choices, four out of five voters - even among those who voted 'Yes' on 1A - agreed that the special election was just another example of the failure of the Governor and Legislature, who should make the hard decisions necessary to really fix the budget. Only 20% agreed the special election was a sincere effort to fix the state's budget mess.
I would argue that the voters feel no trust in the legislature because they see time and again policy solutions that stick the average Californian with the bill that the wealthy and well-connected don't pay. The fact that the only permanent tax issue in the February budget was a $1 billion dollar tax cut for the largest corporations in America is a perfect example.
The polling memo also shows broad support for tax increases in a variety of areas, including wiping out this massive corporate tax cut:
75% support increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages (62% support among 'No' voters)
74% support increasing taxes on tobacco (62% support among 'No' voters)
73% support imposing an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing
state (60% support among 'No' voters)
63% support closing the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of
new property they purchase (58% support among 'No' voters)
63% support increasing the top bracket of the state income tax from nine point three percent to
10 percent for families with taxable income over $272,000 a year and to eleven percent for
families with taxable incomes over $544,000 a year (51% support among 'No' voters)
59% support prohibiting corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the
taxes they owe (55% support among 'No' voters)
In addition, voters oppose the kind of spending cuts outlined by the Governor.
Now, I'm sure I'll hear "eat it, you pipe dream librul hippie" because of the structural issues that prohibit these kind of tax solutions. But the reason that the legislature has such desperately low esteem right now is that they fail to publicly even advocate for the solutions Californians plainly want, or the breakage of the structural barriers that would provide it. This failure caused the May 19 debacle and will cause further problems for the Democrats in the state if they are not careful. A political party seen as devoid of principle will not be a successful political party forever. What Californians desire, essentially, is leadership. And they will punish those who refuse to give it to them.
UPDATE by Brian: I've posted the slides for the Binder Research presentation over the flip.
As the special election swirls the bowl, I think one of the enduring memories I will have is the late-campaign decision on the part of the Governor to ignore the current budget deficit. That's right, ignore.
In the final sprint to Tuesday's election, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has warned day after day of teacher layoffs, fire-station shutdowns and other dire consequences if voters fail to pass budget measures that would produce almost $6 billion to ease California's fiscal crisis.
Yet Schwarzenegger and his allies have abandoned TV advertising -- the main vehicle for reaching voters statewide -- on the three measures that would generate that money: Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E.
Instead, they are running TV ads solely for Propositions 1A and 1B, measures that would do nothing to slow California's slide toward insolvency this summer, but in future years could help the budget's bottom line and Schwarzenegger's political image.
It's really all you need to know about this special election - at a time when the Governor is flailing madly, casting about for things to sell like someone rummaging through his things for a garage sale, and threatening all sorts of cuts and mass prisoner release and 100 other options for closing the current budget gap, his campaign committee pushes the only measure on the ballot that would do NOTHING to close the current budget gap. He just wants his long-sought spending cap and unilateral executive authority to make budget cuts. It's all, as said above, about image.
Barbara Boxer made it pretty clear in a news conference at the California Democratic Party convention that she and Dianne Feinstein would be studying the ballot measures and offering a joint statement on them in the near future. As it turns out, with a week to go, she broke with DiFi, who has made no public pronouncement, and quietly endorsed Props. 1A and 1B yesterday.
"California's budget process is broken," Boxer announced. "It's time for California to join the vast majority of states and reform the two-thirds requirement for adopting the budget.
"However, until we make this crucial reform, I will be supporting Propositions 1A and 1B on the May 19 ballot. These two measures will help get California back on track, while protecting our investment in education."
I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger misspelled "track" in the initial release for Boxer, and she had to re-release it.
The relative lack of fanfare around this announcement, and Boxer's unwillingness to make her opinion clear on any of the other measures, suggests that Boxer just wanted to fulfill her obligation to say something in the most silent way possible. She doesn't want to back the whole loser of the ballot and doesn't want to impinge upon her Democratic colleagues in the legislature who put together the deal. That's about it.
UPDATE: Now DiFi has come out in favor of 1A & 1B as well, while specifically rejecting Prop. 1C and calling for "a budgeting system that works effectively and efficiently in times of budget crisis." If this was the case all along, and the endorsements came out within 24 hours of each other, why wouldn't they have put out the statement at the same time? Good to know our Senators work so effectively together.
Meanwhile, No on 1A released a TV ad for the final week, and I'm a bit baffled by its middle-ground focus on "porkbarrel spending" that may result from the way the spending cap and reserve fund are structured. It's true that money in the reserve fund could only be used for one-time spending like infrastructure and debt service, and that does significantly change the model for how the state gets funded, with ongoing services getting sucked dry. I don't know if I would characterize that as "pork-barrel" spending, necessarily. In addition, the loss of revenues in recurring services like health care and education, not the supposed pork barrel spending, concerns me far more. The ad does hit the fact that 1A won't kick in on the revenue side for two years, so framing it as a response to the current crisis strains credulity. The larger frame here is of Prop. 1A as a complex proposal full of loopholes that will not meet its intended goals.
At last count, the California Teachers Association has dumped $10 million dollars or so into a FAIL whale of a special election, so they could secure their out-of-court settlement for $9.3 billion dollars in education money. It's important to understand what that money at stake in Prop. 1B represents. It's OWED to the schools. Not a gift, not a reward for good behavior, but owed. Under Prop. 98, the state must provide a minimum level of baseline funding to education, based on an algorithm that can be calculated in a number of ways. This Governor has consistently tried to under-calculate Prop. 98, and most recently, his Administration determined it in such a way that shortchanged the schools by $9.3 billion dollars. The education community could have demanded payment under statutory law, but instead the CTA decided to enter into what ultimately appears to be a failed bargain, whereby schools would receive money down the road from Prop. 1B if Prop. 1A, the funding mechanism for those payments, passed. The California Federation of Teachers, which unlike CTA has opposed Prop. 1A, yesterday did what would have been much cheaper for CTA to do, which is sue the state for the money owed the schools.
"Proposition 1B is going to fail, and besides that, we still have to worry about funding for 2009-10," said Marty Hittelman, CFT president. "We need to do this right away so we can take care of 2009-10, since they're already debating that. We want to make sure they understand they have to repay us."
After revenues sharply declined, the state cut 2008-09 school funding by $7.9 billion, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger believed the state did not legally owe that money back to education. School groups disagreed and threatened to sue the state before Schwarzenegger and lawmakers put Propositions 1A and 1B on the ballot to repay that money, plus another $1.3 billion owed from 2007-08.
CFT also wants the courts to resolve for good whether the state owes schools money in similar budget situations in the future.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has simply been untrustworthy when it comes to education, and has repeatedly broken the law when it comes to funding. You don't bargain with that, you fight it. Eventually, CFT and SEIU Local 99, also on the lawsuit, will win in court. And by the way, they'll end up getting the money faster than under Prop. 1B, which doesn't pay out until 2011-12. Not to mention that Prop. 1B is, you know, losing.
The Budget Reform Now folks, on the heels of one ad narrowing their focus to Props. 1A & 1B, have released yet another, basically with the same script only substituting a teacher for the firefighter, warning of $16 billion in cuts if 1A & 1B fail to pass. 1A & 1B do NOTHING in the current budget year or the next. Nothing at all. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his cadres are exploiting a crisis with fearmongering tactics to gain a spending cap they can use to ratchet down state services forever.
This is very simple. If 1A's spending cap would immediately limit state services $16 billion dollars below the baseline funding needed to provide services at the current level, then $16 billion in services aren't at risk with the failure of 1A. They're at risk with passage. And that risk would be permanent, and would increase every year, well and above the two year extension of tax increases.
Arnold obviously doesn't give a damn about the current budget gap. Heck, he probably enjoys it; he can use his new furlough tools and threaten to set the state on fire and a host of other right-wing options. The golden goose for him and his rich supporters is the spending cap. And those Democrats who enable him in this effort ought to understand what they're supporting - a permanent reduction in services for the state's most vulnerable citizens. "What's your solution," is the phrase thrown around at us. The problem is we know theirs.
UPDATE: The latest brilliant idea from the Governor: raid local governments if the Props fail, a direct contradiction of his deal with cities to stop raiding their budgets five years ago. Under yet another Prop. 1A from 2004, the state can borrow 8% of property tax revenues (about $2 billion), which would have to be repaid with interest in three years. The credit cards are open for business again! While this measure represents 10-15% of the total projected budget gap, it would decimate services at the city and county level, services that - voila! - the state would need to step in to provide. Also the Governor cannot pull this off unilaterally: it would require a 2/3 vote of the legislature.
Roger Niello has found a use for the special election - to deny the SEIU a contract they bargained in good faith with the Governor. Enough Yacht Party members joined him to delay the deal.
A local Republican on Monday helped defeat an Assembly bill that must be passed to enshrine the new contract the Schwarzenegger administration signed this year with its largest state workers' union.
Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, urged legislators to oppose or abstain from voting on AB 964, saying it was "awfully inappropriate" to vote right now on the agreement with the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000.
Niello said legislators should wait at least until May 19, when Californians vote in a special election on six propositions to shrink the budget gap.
"We should not pre-empt the voters by dealing with this issue today (Monday)," Niello told the Assembly. "It can wait until June or after."
Of course, voters have no say in government labor contracts; they appear nowhere on the May 19 ballot. But Andrew McIntosh explains what's really going on here, something the Sacramento Bee saw fit to put on their website but not in their print edition.
Niello appears to be using Republican clout to offer the governor some leverage - holding out on the contract approval as long as possible so that the SEIU doesn't mount a major attack-ad campaign on propositions he favors, such as 1A.
That proposition would give the governor new power to unilaterally make mid-year cuts in spending to some programs and extend certain tax increases by two years.
That's hardly speculative. Niello voted for the budget and supports the ballot measures that resulted from them. He knows that SEIU has already dropped $500,000 into defeating Prop. 1A, the long-sought spending cap, and has decided to use the leverage of the contract vote to blackmail SEIU into keeping quiet. Even Republicans who don't support the special election have no problem taking time out of their busy day to shit on workers, so they are happy do the Governor's bidding, hoping that, in the aftermath, they can knuckle the union down for more concessions should the measures fail. Which would be absurd - the Governor made a deal, which includes major concessions from the union, separate from the passage or failure of any ballot measure.
No surprise, by the way, that the Bee doesn't go into this level of detail in their print edition - the editorial board basically threatened SEIU in exactly the same way as Niello a week or so ago, arguing that the passage of their contract should be tied to Prop. 1A's passage. And they have the audacity to call out the SEIU for duplicity, while rooting on legislative blackmail because SEIU's parent organization disagrees with the editorial opinion of the Bee on how to best serve the long-term interests of the state. And this shows in them leaving the underlying reasons for legislative deals out of their news articles.
Last week, Robert Cruickshank offered the special election advocates some pretty good advice - focus on Prop. 1C, which covers 83% of the short-term budget hole that can be gained from the passage of the ballot measures, because the state party approved it, because it's the only measure that matters in the near term, and because they need to focus their energies, since very little good is likely to come of the election at this point. Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger controls the Budget Reform Now Campaign. And he has shown himself to be completely indifferent to the short-term needs of the state in favor of writing a long-term, right-wing spending cap into the state Constitution. Because instead of abandoning all the other measures in favor of 1C, Budget Reform Now has jettisoned everything in favor of 1A & 1B. I saw this ad a couple days ago, out of nowhere, and Budget Reform Now dropped it without a press release. The ad tries to use the 2005 special election imagery which killed Arnold's Prop. 76 (substantially the same proposal) in favor of this spending cap, with the firefighter warning of "$16 billion in cuts" without bothering to mention that those "cuts," really lost revenues, would be two years off. And the new "Yes on 1A and 1B" logo makes an appearance.
I think we can finally figure out what Arnold Schwarzenegger wants from this election. He could care less about the $6 billion in short-term budget solutions - but his corporate partners want that spending cap, and his new pals in the CTA want their out-of-court settlement locked in (it would've cost them less just to take the Governor to court for falsely calculating Prop. 98 revenues, with more of a chance of winning). So all this talk about how we have to vote Yes or the budget hole will grow deeper was a ruse. The Governor clearly supports the deeper budget deficit, or at least he could give a crap with coming up with a solution. He and his Chamber of Commerce puppet masters want that cap. They have wanted it for four years. Anyone lining up with these interests should understand what they really support. Good job, Democratic leadership.
I spoke at yet another Democratic Club meeting on the May 19 propositions yesterday, against yet another member of the California Legislature, Julia Brownley (who I really like and respect). One thing I sought to make clear to everyone is that we are going back to the drawing board on May 20 no matter what happens on May 19. The Legislative Analyst already finds the February budget deal to be $8 billion dollars out of balance, and April tx receipts came up $1.8 billion dollars short of the budget projection. Some of us recognize that this means alternative solutions must be gathered right now, because Democratic legislators will be stuck in the chamber with the Yacht Party on May 20 regardless.
I was heartened to hear Assmeblywoman Brownley note that a majority vote fee increase will probably be part of the solution. When the Legislature passed this in December, they raised more money than would be sacrificed if Props. 1C, 1D and 1E failed. An argument could be made that the majority vote fee increase combined with the passage of those props would obviate the need for almost any cuts. I think that's faulty reasoning, since 1D and 1E ARE cuts, to vital services that will cost the state more money in the long run. As for 1C I find it completely unworkable and just a borrowing gimmick.
I do have to say that it would be much easier to swallow this posturing from the ballot measure supporters that they would have no choice but massive cuts on May 20 if everything failed, if they didn't enable massive permanent corporate tax cuts in the last budget deal...
Corporate tax attorneys are chuckling over the absurd deal in the last agreement that lets multistate and multinational taxpayers decide, each year, how much income they want to report to California. Because this was negotiated in private, with no hearings and no independent expertise brought to bear, the result is a giveaway and a national embarrassment, in a state that had prided itself on a fair, successful corporation tax.
Here's how it works. Each state typically figures out what percentage of a large company's business is done in the state, and then taxes that percentage of income. Historically, if 10% of a multistate company's payroll, property and sales are located in the state, then 10% of its nationwide or worldwide income is subject to tax. In the budget deal, California changed the formula to allow companies to choose to make that percentage based only on sales in California.
The entire architecture of the ballot pact that emerged was heavily shaped by leaders' desire to please - or at least neutralize - the state's most powerful political players.
Now, some of those very interest groups protected in the budget deal are bankrolling the campaign to ratify it.
For the oil industry, the package omits a once-proposed 9.9 percent oil severance tax. Energy companies have given more than a million dollars to pass the plan, led by a $500,000 donation from Chevron.
For the liquor, beer and wine industry, increased alcohol taxes were shelved. Alcohol industry heavyweights, such as E. & J. Gallo Winery ($100,000) and California's Beer and Beverage Distributors ($50,000), have all opened their checkbooks.
For the teachers union, the list of ballot measures includes a separate measure to ensure repayment of deep cuts to schools and protections for top-priority programs. The California Teachers Association has contributed $7 million to the passage of Propositions 1A and 1B.
For casino-operating Indian tribes, the state lottery measure avoids any new games that could threaten their gambling operations. Tribes, who could have been major contributors against the lottery proposition, have kept their checkbooks closed.
In the last budget deal, all the industry-specific taxes, all the service-based taxes that wouldn't be so regressive, faded away, and the same groups protected by that fade (including practically every sports team, as sporting event-industry taxes were once on the table) ponied up for the special election. So pardon me if I don't believe your lament that you'll just be forced to cut state services, when you found room for billions in tax cuts to the largest corporations in America and protected every single industry that could donate money for ads and mailers. Let's just say I don't buy the image of a legislature with their hands tied.
I've been pretty up front in questioning whether or not the next Governor matters compared to the structural reforms needed to get California back on a sustainable course. Nevertheless, the off-year CDP convention in Sacramento does traditionally kick off the following year's gubernatorial race, and this year was no different. Given what we know right now, I think it's highly probable, actually, that the Democratic primary will feature only two candidates. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom were the only two with any visibility whatsoever in Sacramento, and while Antonio Villaraigosa may still feel he can jump in late and capture a healthy share of the Latino vote in any primary, his awkward exit from the festivities does not lead me to believe that he will bother with the race.
If that is the case, we have a virtual mirror-image of the 2008 national Democratic primary, with a candidate positioning himself as looking to the future against a candidate firmly implanted in the past. That's the general belief, anyway, and there's quite a bit of truth to that. Clearly, Mayor Newsom's convention speech continually framed the choice for voters as "whether we're going to move forward in a new direction or whether we're going to look back." Clearly, each candidate has a profile that fits that general mold. And the general mood of each candidate's signature event, with Brown lolling at the old Governor's Mansion with his 1974 blue Plymouth in the driveway, literally an historical set piece, while Newsom closed off a street and held a block party featuring Wyclef Jean (and got what amounts to an endorsement from Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson when he introduced Newsom as "the next Governor of California"), could not have been more different.
And yet Jerry Brown has always been something of a political futurist, someone who was mocked in his time for being unrealistic and silly, on issues which are now firmly in the mainstream of the American political debate. And as CalBuzz points out, Brown's presentation to the convention may be closer to the zeitgeist than Newsom's right now:
While Newsom (a Hillary supporter, BTW) spent the weekend trying to position himself as Obama to Brown's Clinton, General Jerry delivered a Jim Hightower-like jeremiad to the convention, filled with rips and roars at financial insiders and white collar criminals. In tone and substance it seemed closer to tapping the populist zeitgeist of these financially troubled times than did Newsom's effort to fight the last war.
Voters fed up with Governor Arnold's shattered promises to "blow up boxes" and sweep clean the mess in Sacramento may well be in the mood for less "change" and more common sense, which happens to be Brown's political meme du jour.
Ultimately, I don't cotton much to these popularity-based views of major elections, preferring to judge on substance. The primary electorate is older, but that means there's more potential for increasing turnout among youth, so we'll see where that leads. But ultimately, I'm going to judge on the basis of substance, particularly with respect to structural reform. And while Brown gave a fairly nice speech, highlighting his high-profile work as Attorney General suing the likes of Wells Fargo, in essence he left unanswered the charges that he is an apostle for fantasyland in thinking he can just bring Democrats and Republicans in a room together and get them to work everything out. On the other hand, Newsom, in a meet and greet with bloggers, came out once again in favor of a Constitutional convention to put all of these contradictory and hobbling budget and governing ideas on the chopping block and work from scratch to figure out a way to organize the state that makes sense. You can ague with his somewhat rosy picture of his record - as I have - but you cannot argue that he has a forward-looking view of how to finally blow up this insanely dysfunctional structure.
On the near-term issue of the special election, Brown has appeared on stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger to tout the Yes side on all measures, while Newsom has not. In fact, he expressed his opposition to Props. 1C, 1D and 1E, saying "I can't get my arms around balancing the budget with lottery money" and that 1D and 1E would raid successful and cost-effective programs. Now, what I can't get MY arms around is Newsom's support for 1A, particularly because he explained that his first instinct was to oppose, but that he "had to be responsible" and look at the impact on city budgets. However, 1A would provide no budgetary relief for two years, while 1C, 1D and 1E, which he opposes, would. In clarifying this, Newsom spokesman Eric Jaye explained that the impact on city budgets could be made worse by the bond markets seeing the failure of 1A and raising their interest rates, but there's definitely a tension there. Perhaps Newsom thinks that he can fix whatever damage is done by a constitutional convention, but a voter-approved spending cap would be hard to cancel out within a the space of a year or two.
(More on the Newsom blogger meetup in a later post.)
I think there's room to be critical of both candidates, as well as room to be praiseworthy. But rather than framing this election along cultural or generational lines, I think it's necessary to frame it along the policies they would both bring to Sacramento and whether they make sense for progressives to get behind. So it's not past vs. future for me so much as success vs. FAIL.
Efforts by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders to win voter approval of six budget measures on the May 19 ballot grew more difficult Sunday when a sharply split state Democratic Party declined to back three of them.
The mixed verdict by more than 1,200 delegates to a state party convention came after a nasty floor fight over the grim menu of proposed solutions to California's severe budget crisis.
"We've got all kinds of divisions," Art Pulaski, leader of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said of the fractures among unions that drove the party's internal rift. "It's not unusual for us."
Republicans, too, are split on Propositions 1A through 1F. The state Republican Party has broken with Schwarzenegger, its standard-bearer, and begun fighting the measures.
Taken together, the muddled messages from California's two major parties threaten to fuel the sort of voter confusion that often spells doom for complicated ballot measures.
This is pretty on the money. There's a split within both parties, one that Democratic leaders aren't coming to terms with. Neither side has taken heed of its grassroots, at least in part. With the propositions in trouble, we must take an eye to the message that will come out in the aftermath. The truth is that Democrats have a principled policy difference here, and those legitimate concerns should not be discounted by the leadership in favor of a narrative that voters opposed the ballot because of 2 years' worth of certain tax increases. In fact, the word "taxes" was not used once on the floor of the convention by those opposed to 1A or any other measure. We oppose these measures because we find them deeply harmful to the future functioning of the state. We believe there's a better way in the short term, with the majority-vote fee increase, and the long-term, with the end of the conservative veto and a more sustainable course, based on broader-based taxation to pay for the services all Californians desire. We reject in whole the dumbed-down, simplistic framing that 1A would "reform the budget" and failure would court disaster.
As for the spin that delegates "supported" the measures on the "May 11 ballot" (Steve, you should probably get the date right if you're working for the Yes side), and a "supermajority quirk in party rules" was used by opponents, I really don't know what to even say to that. First of all, the quirk has been on the books for a long time, and it was actually progressives like Dante Atkins who have been working to reform the endorsement process, so welcome to the party. Next, with fully 1/3 of the delegates electeds and appointeds, most of whom negotiated and supported the deal, and another 1/3 elected by county committees, and another 1/3 grassroots delegates elected at caucuses, a 60% threshold, which again was never argued by these people when it worked for them, represents a fairly broad consensus of all three sectors. Finally, if you went state by state, I would imagine you would find such a threshold in many if not most state Democratic parties, whereas the 2/3 rule for the budget, to which some are making a false equivalence, only finds parallel in Arkansas and Rhode Island. I would be all too happy to completely reform the endorsement process and even question its use by the party outright, that would be a fine debate. But whining about known rules sounds like Hillary Clinton's staff bemoaning the fact of caucuses in the 2008 primary when they knew the facts for years. The grapes, they are sour.
Now that the endorsement battle is over and the election just weeks from being done, let's have a dialogue instead of a lecture, and let's take the concerns seriously of those who reject the false messiah of a spending cap and raiding important voter-approved initiatives and balancing the budget on the backs of gamblers. Let's actually advocate for something rather than being forced to accept something. Let's not worry about "what the Republicans will say" and let's not sniff that "pie in the sky solutions won't work." Let's reform the state and come out with a government that works.
In the Resolutions Committee meeting here in Sacramento, the committee approved a "Yes" vote for all the measures on the May 19 ballot. The discussion was fairly revealing and typical of what I've seen around the state. The committee members, almost to a man except for Calitics' own Brian Leubitz, argued that the ballot measures reflected the best that the legislature could do, and spun tales about the consequences of failure. Out in the audience, the crowd loudly cheered any time this official narrative was challenged by remarking on the consequences of success, for example the spending cap that would ratchet down state services permanently. My favorite part was when someone, arguing for 1D, said that "if we don't pass this, children will suffer painful cuts." Which of course is the POINT of 1D. "We have to think of the children when we cut programs for children!" was the basic message.
Once again, we see the grassroots/establishment divide, where the legislature and their compatriots in learned helplessness wail about tales of woe while urging a Yes vote on measures that would make things demonstrably worse in the state. We've gone through this over and over again, so the fact that the resolutions committee supported the measures doesn't surprise. However, the strength of the opposition in the room tells me that something may occur on the floor on Sunday.
I would guess that the establishment will try to push the entire package through, and since the only real institutional opposition is on 1A, there will be an effort to pull 1A from the consent calendar. I think it's genuinely up for question as to whether or not it was successful, which is interesting in and of itself.
The governor went on a bit of a tirade against dissent, first talking smack about U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger's 2007 order reducing the operation of pumps in the Delta to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, then about a three-federal-judge panel's moves toward ordering the release of certain inmates to reduce California's chronic and unconstitutional prison overcrowding, and then about Clark Kelso, the receiver empowered by a federal judge to demand $8 billion from the state to correct unconstitutional, decades-long underfunding prison health care.
"It's not productive for the state to have so many chefs in the kitchen," the governor grumped. "Those are the kinds of things that make it very difficult."
But his ire wasn't just directed at the federal courts. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, he said, opposes him on fiscal policy at every turn, he said: "He's running for Congress now, so that's good."
And he cited state Controller John Chiang's and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer's opposition to his plans to cut state salaries last year. "How does a coach win a basketball game when all of the players are running off in different directions?" Schwarzenegger asked.
Maybe that's why he's so hot for Proposition 1A, which would give the governor new authority to unilaterally reduce some spending for state operations and capital outlay and eliminate some cost-of-living increases, all without legislative approval - shoo, you pesky compromises; begone, consensus! Also, maybe he's forgetting that these federal judges' job is to hold California to its obligations under federal law and the U.S. Constitution, and that the Democratic statewide elected officials he's knocking are with this state's majority party while he's in the minority.
Now you tell me that this Governor is a good-faith operator when he seeks to grab additional executive power without legislative oversight. He's an actor used to getting his way because he has the biggest trailer on the set. And he has little use for those measly checks and balances. It's all so very American. So why not just get rid of them?
Only problem for Mr. Whiny Ass Titty Baby, nobody in the state likes him and they consider him to be a terrible steward of government. That's why they're rejecting his efforts to hamstring the state even further.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's Budget Reform Now group released their first TV ad yesterday, full of buzzwords and bullet points ("Hold the politicians accountable!") and admitting that the package includes a "spending limit," which is certainly further than the Democratic legislative leadership has been willing to go. But as one-line summations of the election goes, you can't get much better than future chair of the CDP John Burton, who took a pass on giving his specific voting choices for May 19, but who uttered this classic quip:
In any case, pressed on the question of whether his lifelong bleeding heart liberalism would allow him to back some of the permanent budget cuts that would result if Prop. 1A is passed, Mr. Almost Chairman responded with a classic Burtonism:
"I think when it's all over, the ones getting fucked will be the poor people."
Now, I could give you the charts showing how spending will be forced down and payments to the reserve fund mandated even in bad budget years, or offer the example of TABOR's spending cap in Colorado, which was disastrous. And I could follow you through the contours of this bad public policy and how it does nothing to relieve the structural problems that can get California out of the ditch. But I cannot improve upon that line. I've been critical of Burton in the past, based on the need for forward-thinking strategies at the CDP, but I've never questioned his liberalism. And you have to give him the credit for this, er, bon mot.
The SEIU donated $500,000 to the No on 1A campaign, the first truly major expenditure by any group against the ballot measures on May 19. The No on 1A campaign now hold about $1 million in their bank account. While this is dwarfed by the money dumped into the Yes campaign by, among other groups, the CTA, billionaires like Jerry Perenchio, and Chevron, given the attitudes of the electorate even a little money on the No side could be enough to stop the onslaught and tip these measures. Politicos understand this fairly well:
"It just got a lot harder," said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a former Republican strategist.
"The biggest advantage the proponents have had all along is the lack of a well-funded opposition," Schnur said. "Historically, you don't need to outspend ballot measures to beat them, and in a low-turnout election this is a decent amount of money." [...]
"Right now there's a tremendous tendency to reject anything out of Sacramento," said Republican strategist Dave Gilliard.
Good for the SacBee, by the way, for pointing out that Prop. 1A "has a long-term impact and would not directly alter the budget until 2011."
I've been speaking at a lot of grassroots Democratic groups against these measures, purely on the public policy merits, and the overriding sentiment I'm seeing out there lines up with what Dave Gilliard says there. The disconnect between the establishment and the grassroots is truly striking. People don't feel like their concerns have been met, either this year or for the last thirty, really. They see another layer of budget dysfunction forced upon the voters that fails to get at the structural problems. And now, they're starting to see their voices manifested with action, as well as the mother's milk of California politics, money.
In a last-ditch and ultimately futile attempt to get the Republicans to support the May 19 ballot measures, Yacht Party leader in the Assembly Mike Villines played the majority vote card.
One fear of GOP lawmakers surrounding the May 19 special election is that should the ballot measures fail, Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could go around them and simply swap certain taxes for fees and raise revenues without their votes [...]
"I know it's counterintuitive, but by coming to the table and negotiating, we saved the two-thirds protection," Villines said as the California Republican Party opposed the measures. "Mark my word, I believe that if these initiatives don't go through, you will see a majority-vote budget, you will see it signed and you will see the defense of taxpayers in this state disappear."
Mike, you say that like majority rule is a bad thing.
Unfortunately I don't share the optimism of Asm. Villines about the backbone of the Democratic Party to go ahead and fill the budget gap with a work-around fee increase. I had the opportunity to share the stage with a couple members of the legislature this weekend to debate the special election, and in particular, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez seemed especially pessimistic on the majority vote option. He basically said that the lawyers advising the legislature questions the legality of the effort and that if the ballot measures fail, "we will have a cuts-only budget." He even went so far as to identify particular cuts that have already been discussed, all affecting the usual suspects - the elderly, the blind, the IHSS patients, kids without health care, CalWorks members, etc. So that's the May 20th strategy that the legislature is teeing up.
Now, maybe it's easier to ramp up the fear by playing up this disaster scenario in the event of the failure of the ballot measures. But I definitely expressed disappointment that the Majority Leader was foreclosing on an option which the nonpartisan Legislative Counsel found perfectly legal. I see no need to shut down creative solutions to the budget problem, especially when they can offer a glimpse into how a working government can function in a post-two-thirds environment. Even moderates and conservatives understand that the Yacht Party has hijacked the state and irresponsibly used their chokehold on legislative rules to force failed solutions and drive California into a fiscal ditch. The point is that this is coming, or at least it ought to be, whether by a work-around or ballot initiative, and we can end this hostage situation that Republicans have forced upon us for the last thirty years. To their credit, everyone in the legislature that I've talked to wants to move forward on repealing two-thirds.
Sen. Florez and I had a lot else to discuss in our debate (including his admission that "if you want to vote No on 1F, go ahead," which was a bit off the reservation), including the continued debate over the state spending cap, Prop. 1A (or a spending constraint, if you prefer, but certainly not anything like the inoffensive tweak that supporters make it out to be). In the end, the West Los Angeles Democratic Club took no position on anything but No on 1E, and PDA, where I also spoke this weekend, voted NO on all the ballot measures.
That wise Mr. Skelton intones that Prop. 1A is not "a sneaky trick to raise taxes." I agree. It's a sneaky trick to drown government in a bathtub.
We touched yesterday on this bigger concern about the lessons that may be learned from the special election battle. It is clear that those anti-tax forces on the right will take credit if the ballot measures, particularly 1A, are defeated, saying that this is proof that California has had enough and the vote signals the rise of the teabaggers. That actually would be a dangerous lesson, mainly because it's not true, and it's part and parcel of the vast disinformation around taxes that the cynical forces on the right spare no expense in delivering to the public.
Low-, not high-, income Californians pay the largest share of their income in state and local taxes. Here's an updated analysis of data we've blogged about before that takes into account the temporary tax increase included as part of the February budget agreement.
California is a moderate, not high, tax state when all state and local taxes and fees are taken into account. This results from the fact that California has moderately high state taxes, but low local property taxes due to the impact of Proposition 13 on local property tax collections.
High-income Californians aren't leaving the state due to higher taxes. In fact, the number of millionaire taxpayers is growing at a rate that far exceeds the increase in the number of personal income taxpayers as a whole.
Over the past 15 years, lawmakers have enacted tax cuts that will cost the state nearly $12 billion in 2008-09. That's a larger loss than the $11.0 billion 2009-10 temporary increase in state tax revenues included in the February budget agreement.
Moreover, while the tax increases included in the budget are all temporary, regardless of the outcome of the May election, the September 2008 and February 2009 budget agreements included massive corporate tax cuts that are permanent and that will reduce state revenues by approximately $2.5 billion per year when fully implemented.
Saying that tax policy is just plain wacky and inconsistent neglects these plain facts - that the past thirty years of the conservative veto have tilted tax policy, and most everything else, in a very rightward direction.
In actuality, we are seeing a grassroots/establishment divide, where the grassroots in the Democratic Party would like to see some leadership instead of another layer of failed solutions. Unfortunately, because the voices on the right are so loud in their opposition, and because advocates of the special elections would rather frame themselves in opposition to the right, the right is well-positioned to take credit for the defeat of these measures, should that happen. When that's simply not the lesson that ought to be learned.
The resultant fear is that the feckless Democratic leadership takes that lesson, and then cowers from going down the road of enacting the real structural reforms that represent the only solution possible to lift us from this perpetual disaster. That would be catastrophically wrong. Don't assume from a short-term setback that the Yacht Party mentality runs the state. People will pay for taxes in exchange for services; that was proven in 2005 and it's just as true today. Californians elect their leaders to function and yet the structure of government denies them. Dismantle that barrier, and restore democracy to the state.
The Los Angeles County Democratic Party held their endorsement meeting for the May 19 special election yesterday. The Yes side brought out all the big guns to talk up Prop. 1A: four State Senators, including President Pro Tem Steinberg, Attorney General candidate Ted Lieu, State Superintendent for Public Instruction candidate Gloria Romero and Lieutenant Governor candidate Dean Florez. The No side had two union members from the SEIU and the California Faculty Association and a 2008 Assembly candidate. (UPDATE: It was Carol Liu, not Ted Lieu.)
And the LACDP went neutral.
It's quite remarkable to see practically the entire establishment of the Democratic Party selling fear and so few people buying. My fear is that they will chalk up their failure to the typical right-wing anti-tax bias, when the real indictment here is a failure to lead, to articulate an actual solution instead of the same nonsense that does nothing to effect structural reform. The first ads for 1A and 1B only have one unequivocally true statement in them - that the budget is "A total mess, and we all know it." And yet the prescription for solving the mess is nothing more than making people afraid of some amorphously bigger mess, while neglecting the clear disaster that would arrive with the passage of a spending cap.
This is not about an aversion to two years' worth of sales taxes. It's about an aversion to more demonstrably awful solutions to layer onto an already dysfunctional system. Maybe instead of dictating to their constituents, the leadership in Sacramento could bother to listen to them.
I touched on this in Quick Hits, but Kevin Yamamura has now followed up. The SEIU state council, representing 700,000 workers in the state, has teamed with two other unions to oppose Prop. 1A.
Service Employees International Union's California State Council, which says it represents 700,000 workers, has teamed up with the California Faculty Association and the California Federation of Teachers to form a committee opposing Proposition 1A. The ballot measure would limit state spending in good fiscal years, diverting money to a "rainy-day fund." But it also would extend $16 billion worth of temporary tax increases on sales, income and vehicles to 2013.
"Prop 1A won't be able to do what its supporters claim," said Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, in a statement. "This constitutional amendment, supported by the governor and legislators was developed with no public scrutiny and won't stop the budget chaos. Once voters read this proposal with their own eyes, they will see that it is flawed and overly complicated, and will give extraordinary new and unrestricted power to the governor and his political appointees, with no checks and balances."
The response from Budget Reform Now, the Governor's ad hoc group supporting the measures, is unintentionally hilarious, because it frames once again with the same tired doomsaying rhetoric:
"This is disappointing since those who we hurt the most should Propositions 1A thru 1F not pass will be teachers, schools and the hard-working families of SEIU," said Julie Soderlund, spokeswoman for Budget Reform Now, proponents of the six budget-related ballot measures. "During these tough economic times, it is unfair to do anything that will likely cost many people their jobs."
Way to advocate for your position, guys.
...Meanwhile, Arnold can't leave his house to advocate for the ballot measures because everybody hates him. Boy, Misters Brown, Newsom, and Villaraigosa, you've all really hitched your wagon to a star. Way to go.
Jerry Brown has become the last potential gubernatorial candidate to make a view on one of the propositions on May 19, which is part of a pattern, as Brown has studiously tried to avoid giving any legitimate opinion whatsoever throughout the winter and spring. He supports Prop. 1A, not because he can advocate for its substance, but because it represented a compromise:
The 2010 contender for governor was tepid in his endorsement of the measure, but credited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders for their effort in crafting a compromise: "The budget thing is complicated and it is daunting," he said. "They tried . . . and did the best they could to come up with something."
"You can't make the perfect the enemy of the possible," Brown told calbuzz.
It's a ringing endorsement. And I'm thrilled that the leading candidate for Governor finds the budget "daunting" - very reassuring. In addition, he declined to take a position on the other 5 measures because "I have to read them." And let's be clear that only John Garamendi, among Democratic hopefuls, opposes Prop. 1A. Maybe he read it.
The League of Conservation Voters, similiarly, endorsed the special election ballot measures without telling voters what the propositions would do, but with a healthy amount of fear.
Failure of these measures would open up a gaping hole in the budget and leave critical protections for our health, safety, and prosperous future at great risk [...] The measures are not perfect, but they are our best option to protect critical funding for essential environmental, public health, and education services [...] We need all of these props to pass, or California will lose more than $23 billion over the next four fiscal years-forcing billions upon billions in deeper cuts to education and other popular services [...] When the state was near a complete shutdown this February, a small minority of legislators tried to use the budget meltdown to extract policy concessions on some of California's most fundamental environmental protections in exchange for budget votes. Thanks to your help, we were able to fight back and defeat the most significant proposed rollbacks. If the Propositions fail in May, the budget deficit for next year will add an additional $6 billion dollars in cuts to essential programs to an already impossible budget.
That's not even true on the merits. The Governor and the Yacht Party GOT those concessions on environmental protections, exacting delays in regulating diesel pollution, to use just one example of the many concessions. The CLCV is shading the truth and appealing to fear.
Calitics will have their special election ballot endorsements early this week.
I'm telling you, this special election campaign resembles the Bush-Cheney "9-11 9-11 9-11 Terrist comin' to kill you in your beds!!!!1!" 2004 campaign more with each passing day:
As he launched a radio ad campaign Tuesday for his budget measures on the May 19 ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said failure to approve the package would worsen the state's already-dire fiscal crisis.
"If they don't pass, we will be facing a $50 billion problem," Schwarzenegger said at a meeting with Daily News editors and reporters. "It will mean massive cuts in education, hospitals, prisons. These are things people don't want to see cut."
$50 billion. How does the Governor arrive at that figure? He includes $16 billion dollars for the two years of regressive taxes that would be washed out in 2012 and 2013 if Prop. 1A fails. He includes an expected lawsuit from education interests to force payment of $9 billion in raided Prop. 98 funds if 1B fails. He includes the $6 billion that would not fill budget gaps from the last budget if Prop. 1C-1E fail. And then... I don't know, that's only $31 billion, I guess $50 billion sounds like a nice big number.
You can put it on posters!
This is not the first time the Governor has flat-out made up numbers to win an election. That was his road to victory in 2006, when he lied about Phil Angelides' tax programs. The True Lies are back, and sadly I don't expect a soul to call him on it.
Let's partially accept the Governor's premise and agree that we would have a deficit caused by cutting two years' worth of tax increases in 2012 and 2013. Is he suggesting that the legislature would be barred from acting on anything for 3-4 years until that future problem arises? He might as well say we have a $200 billion dollar problem, extrapolating out to 2050.
The "doomsday scenario" only exists if you accept the premise of the conservative veto. Only then does California risk going over the cliff. A responsible, functional legislature that has the ability to reflect the will of the people of the state is in no danger, which is why the only reforms anyone should be voting for are the full repeal of the 2/3 requirement for budgets and taxes.
I will quickly tire of these nonsense efforts to scare people into backing another layer of restriction onto an already failed budget process. Hopefully the voters feel the same way.
UPDATE: This is amazing. Shane Goldmacher queries the Governor's spokesman on where the hell Arnold came up with the $50 billion dollar figure, and look at the response:
"He was speaking hypothetically," said spokesman Aaron McLear. "His point was if we don't reform our budget system then we'll be right back where we were with that huge budget deficit."
I'm sure he'll continue to "speak hypothetically" in the most hyperbolic way possible. Some would call this manner of speaking, um, "lying."
