Back to Partisan Republican Land

If anyone still had any doubts about Arnold's party affiliation, yesterday's State of the State address should have erased them. Arnold is a Republican. His solution to a budget crisis is to slash spending and grab more power for himself. It is that simple.

He refuses to examine the reasons why we have found ourselves staring at a $14 million deficit. Instead, he has gone back to his failed ideas from 2005. LAT:

Returning to policies he advanced without success early in his tenure, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called Tuesday for state government to permanently rein in spending and vowed not to raise taxes next year -- even as he prepared a budget that would increase insurance fees for millions of property owners.

Schwarzenegger, facing a $14-billion deficit, said in his annual State of the State address that he would propose a "difficult" budget Thursday that would hurt many groups, such as AIDS patients, the poor and the elderly. He did not mention that he would also try to raise money for firefighting efforts through a proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, to collect a surcharge from renters, homeowners and business owners who buy property insurance.

Perhaps he has finally learned one lesson: don't attack firefighters in California.

But back to the issue at hand. The state has a huge budget deficit. Our governor has decided to side with the Republicans who want to drown the government in the bathtub. The result of their policies would be catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of Californians. Children would go without health insurance, elderly without assistance and schools without books. For years, California has been tightening up it's budgetary belt. There is just nothing to give anymore.

The Democrats panned the idea.

"The governor is willing to sell us short," Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) said immediately after the speech. "He is selling us on the excellence of mediocrity. Advocating automatic cuts, but failing to establish the priorities and how to fund them, is political expediency at its best and political leadership at its worst."

The governor does not appear to be charting any sort of middle of the road path on what is a very stark partisan divide on budgeting. He is simply siding with his fellow Republicans and that is not exactly the way to get things done in the legislature. Arnold already tried this concept directly with the voters and it failed miserably. The political calculation here makes about as much sense as the policy concepts.