A California Republican

The Governor is complaining that the Legislature isn’t making all the cuts he wants them to. He needs to stop complaining and, instead, vow to use his power of veto.

It is the only power the Governor really has in the budget. He proposes his budget on January 10th, and his May Revision in early May. Then the Legislature goes to work and does what they want with the budget, and finally the budget bill lands on his desk - its supposed to be there mid-June, but the Legislature never gets it there in time. Then the Governor can exercise his true power - the line-item veto.

If the Governor doesn’t want something to have money spent on it, then he can line-item veto it. He can eliminate words from the budget, and money from the budget. He doesn’t have to fully eliminate things, he can simply eliminate partial amounts. he can also eliminate full amounts.

Why doesn’t he want to do this? Well, he wants the Legislature to fix the budget. His rhetoric is saying that the Legislature has the job to fix the budget, and so they should do it. Additionally, if the Legislature makes the cuts, then the Governor doesn’t get the blame for making the cuts. Instead of being the Governor who wants to “Blow up the boxes” he wants to be the Governor who doesn’t have to make the hard decisions.

All of the decisions he has made have been decisions that look good, or will shock people. The closure of the parks was meant to shock people. The cut in pay to state workers is a decision that looks good to non-state workers. This is the type of Governor we have; the flashy type, not the good, solid, decision-making type.

The Governor cannot add funds to the budget when it reaches his desk, he can only eliminate them. So it is time to stop prancing around the issue and tell the Legislature that he’s going to eliminate funds through his powers of veto. And start with the Legislature. Eliminate their funding so they can only be part-time.