Cal Berkeley Democrats

Don’t Call it the Democratic Budget

On June 27, one day before California’s Democratic legislators and Governor Jerry Brown announced they had reached a deal on the state budget, Grover Norquist, the President of Americans for Tax Reform, appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Norquist’s group is best known for their “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” in which candidates for public office promise to oppose any and all efforts to raise taxes. Norquist himself demonstrated his commitment to this cause during an exchange at the end of his interview:

Colbert: “Terrorists have kidnapped all of our grandmothers. They’ve got them in a subterranean burrow, which you know they have. And all of our grandmothers have been slathered with honey. And they’re going to release fire ants into this burrow who will bite our grandmothers to death. Their only demand is that we increase the marginal tax rate on the top 2% of Americans and we will release them. Do we increase the tax rate or do we let our grandmothers die by ant bite?”

Norquist: “I think we console ourselves with the fact that we have pictures, and memories.”

I’d like to believe he was joking. Unfortunately, Norquist’s philosophy, which has become the norm for today’s Republicans, is no joke, and may go part of the way towards explaining why California’s budget for the upcoming year, the unfittingly labeled “Democratic budget,” is so odious to so many Californians.By state constitutional law, California is required to create a balanced budget each year. When Governor Brown took office in January, he faced a $25 billion deficit for the upcoming budget year. Not wishing to produce a “gimmicky” budget in the mold of his Republican predecessor, Brown proposed a budget solution that eliminated the deficit; roughly half of his solution was cuts in spending and the other half was extensions of taxes that were set to expire in July. Because he promised during his campaign to not raise taxes without voter approval, Brown asked that the legislature put the tax extensions up for a vote by the people in June. However, as all tax increases in California require two-thirds approval from both the Assembly and Senate, at least two Republicans in each of the Democratically-controlled chambers would have to consent to the placing these extensions on the ballot.

In March, the Governor signed over $12 billion of cuts in state services into law. Republicans refused to put tax extensions on the ballot. In May, Brown announced that revenue projections for the upcoming year were better than expected, and that the remaining deficit would only be $9.6 billion. Republicans refused to put tax extensions on the ballot. As the budget deadline approached in June, Brown kept negotiating with Republicans to give the people the opportunity to vote on tax extensions, and repeatedly they refused. In the end, Brown and the Democratic legislators were forced to create a budget with further painful cuts, a number of “gimmicks,” and no tax extensions.

This is not a Democratic budget. It was written and passed by Democrats, but it does not reflect Democratic values, and there is not much in it that appeals to Democrats. What it does contain is $150 million in cuts to each the UC and CSU systems, a $150 million cut to state courts, $1.7 billion in cuts to redevelopment agencies that revitalize distressed neighborhoods, and $448 million in cuts to Medi-Cal and Healthy Families (health insurance for low-income families, the disabled, and the elderly). It also optimistically assumes $4 billion in new revenue in the upcoming year, with up to $2.5 billion more in cuts that will be triggered if that money does not materialize, or if not enough of it does. In the worst-case scenario, $1.7 billion would be cut from K-12 education, which would shorten the school year by seven days, and there would also be cuts to school bus transportation and community colleges. Clearly, this budget is hardly the kind of thing that gets liberals out in the street cheering “Yes We Can.” At least it was on time.

So don’t call it the Democratic budget. Through their inaction and inflexibility, Republican legislators forced these unprecedented cuts and gimmicks onto the rest of the state (though, by avoiding their legislative responsibilities, they can freely vote against the budget and then try to blame Democrats for being cold-hearted). On July 1^st, temporary sales taxes and vehicle license fee increases will end, but that doesn’t mean California won’t be paying for this budget. Expect another massive hike of at least 30% to UC tuition and fewer benefits for the state’s neediest residents. If there’s any hope for restoring state funding, it lies in the prospect of a voter-backed initiative in 2012 to raise taxes on the wealthiest Californians. However, the huge thundercloud obscuring this silver lining is that this sensible solution necessitates a few more years of declining accessibility to public education and key social services.

In announcing the “Democratic” budget, Governor Brown lamented the “almost religious reluctance” of his Republican colleagues to even consider dealing with the state budget by raising new revenues. Yet Brown himself can be faulted for his almost religious reluctance to accept that he would not be able to forge a reasonable compromise with Republican legislators. In the future, I doubt that the Governor, as well as the people of California, will have much faith at all in a party that refuses to be practical and sensible in the face of such great challenges for the state.