A California Republican

The state of California is still without a budget deal.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass walked out of budget negotiations yesterday. She, and Sen. Steinberg (the leader in the Senate) are opposed to the Governor’s demands that any solution include a way to reduce spending long term. Instead, they stimply want to solve this crisis, and leave next year’s problems until next year. This is simply not a responsible approach. Pushing the problem until next year won’t make it any easier to solve.

One of the (many) reasons the state is in a budget crisis is because the legislators do not take a long term approach when looking at the state budget. In good years they spend more. In bad years they use accounting gimicks so that they can still spend more. The legislators don’t curb the spending. In addition to the budget, they spend money in bills. Legislators, of both parties, treat money like it grows on trees.

The Democratic leadrs are saying they won’t suspend Prop. 98. Instead, they want to fund the missing portion of the budget through tax increases - or fees as they call them.Ignoring Prop. 98 isn’t a good thing. Prop. 98 eats up almost 50% of the budget. It provides a funding guarantee to K-12 schools, and each year the funding guarantee grows under the formula. This proposition was a California Teacher’s Association (CTA) brain-child, and now the CTA, one of the most powerful unions in the state, doesn’t want it touched. Therefore, the Democrats won’t touch it because CTA told them not to.

So what can be done? Spending can be decreased. This  is a simple solution. The thing families do when their income doesn’t match the spending is to decrease spending. In the state there are many laws and constitutional provisions that require certain levels of spending. The Legislature can remove them, or suspend them, and they should. Spending needs to be decreased. When the income level of the state is what it was in the early 1990’s, the spending needs to be at the same level. Instead of holding to ideological positions the legislators need to get to work.

Until they find a solution, the state is issuing IOUs to various people as payment. The largest banks in California have decided that they will not accept IOUs as payment after Friday. There is a hope that the bank’s rejection of IOUs will force the state to solve the budget crisis.

Nothing is going to move the legislators, and the Governor, until something happens to them personally.

Here’s a suggestion: Veto the budget for the Senate and the Assembly to the lowest level possible - the level that simple provides salary to the Senators and Assemblymembers. According to the Department of Finance budget documents, the total expenditures for the Senate and Assembly are $244,057,000 in 2009-10. The amount of money that goes to the salary of the Senators is $6,363,000; the salaries for the Assemblymembers is $11,038. Therefore, the Governor should cut the Legislature’s budget to $17,104,000. That would save $226,953,000. If the Governor is willing to make the state workers go on a furlough to save $500,000,000 then he should be willing to cut the Legislature’s budget to save $226,953,000. It is not like the legislators are hard at work to earn their salaries. They are not coming up with new ideas. And their staffs are not helping the situation at all, so why should they have money for a staff?

It’s just one idea. Maybe one that would get the Legislature to “reconsider” their positions on cuts and spending levels. It would certainly make it personal to them, somthing that needs to happen so they will move and compromise.