Budget in Limbo

To say things are a mess in Sacramento right now is an understatement. The budget is being attacked by all sides. Usually that is an indication of a good compromise, but sometimes it leads to HillaryCare and everything goes down in flames. Here is a status update.

The Assembly passed the budget in a late night session then said it was going on recess for a month. The trouble started in the Senate before the Assembly even started. Senator Perata was not happy with a package of tax cuts that the Republicans wanted. Then the Senate Republicans started moving the goal posts. They went back to demanding even more cuts, without spelling out what they meant.

Meanwhile, advocates for the poor, elderly, education and transportation expressed their disappointment at the budget that passed the Assembly. George Skelton today went after the cuts to the poor.

Anyway, it was about the time of the wine-tasting that the legislative leaders hatched their plan to roll California's most vulnerable.OK, maybe I'm guilty of a cheap shot. But it's no more a cheap shot than picking the pockets of the poor in order to bring spending and taxes closer into balance.

The victims list includes 1.2 million impoverished aged, blind and disabled, plus 500,000 welfare families, mostly single moms with two kids.

Skelton then reminds us of the comments made by Nunez and Perata earlier on these type of cuts.

Check this Perata comment to reporters after a July 12 negotiating session with GOP leaders:

"They want us to cut in places that Democrats just didn't get elected to come up here and cut. So for any program that involves the elderly, people who are disabled, people who are mentally ill, our mantra is kind of, we're here to protect those who can't protect themselves."

Nuñez was even more adamant: "We're not going to take the canes away from the blind. We're not going to kick people out of their wheelchairs … kick poor kids into the street. We just refuse to do that under any circumstances."

Guess he was speaking literally. Could have fooled me. I and virtually everyone around the Capitol thought he was promising not to buy Republican votes with poor people's pocketbooks.

Look, they managed to restore most of the cuts that Arnold had proposed, but not all. But then they went and cut taxes, which opened them up to new criticism. This has opened them up for criticism for both their previous comments. It's hard to justify the tax cuts when they had said they were not going to cut aid to the most vulnerable and then they did just that. Then Nunez made it even worse.

"There's a lot in this budget," Nuñez concluded, "for us Democrats to be very proud of."

I actually thought that Nunez was at his best when he was talking about how painful it was to pass this budget with these cuts on it. He was blaming the process and the Republicans for the eventual deal. This was an interesting passage in his California Progress Report post.

I’m not a huge fan of tax credits, but I do recognize the argument these credits can prime the pump for economic benefit to the state. And the money spent on them – which the Republicans would never have pumped back into the social programs Democrats would prefer – seems more acceptable than just paying back Wall Street investors even earlier, and would certainly have a more positive impact on the state than accepting across the board cuts as Senate Republicans proposed.

Now that is a much better argument for support than calling the budget you passed fiscally responsible.

Realisticly though, it is highly unlikely that the budget is going to move further to the left than what was passed by Nunez. The Republicans got everything they could from the Democrats, as should be obvious from the fairly visible backlash. They are further isolating themselves with their calls for further cut backs and failing to lay out exactly what would be in them. At this point, they would need to cut education and that is simply not going to happen. Not even Arnold wants to see that. He has learned his lesson.

Wednesday the Senate is back in session. All sides will have had several days to prepare their strategy. Arnold already failed once to get the Republicans to play ball. Perhaps they have pleased the Flash Report crowd enough with their "courageous stand" that they can now come back to planet reality and pass the budget. They are living in a fantasy land, if they think they are going to win the public's love by cutting social programs and education even further than what the Democrats agreed to. Especially when they refuse to state publicly what they want to cut.