Recently this blog reported that California’s perpetual budget problems originate in a decades-long tradition honored by state lawmakers to increase spending more than tax revenues go up. This spending addiction is apparently so strong that legislators never manage to submit a budget to the governor in time for the June 15 state constitutional deadline. This year, Golden State voters have added another measure to try to convince their elected officials to honor the constitution: legislators will not get paid for every day the budget is delayed.
There are some signs that this incentive is working. According to the Sacramento Bee, Democrats are closing in on a deal that would raise taxes on already heavily over-taxed Californians:
With no bipartisan deal in sight, legislative Democrats are poised to approve a majority-vote budget today that cuts deeper into universities, raises car registration fees and extends a quarter-cent sales tax. According to an Assembly budget aide authorized to brief the press, the spending plan closes a remaining $9.6 billion deficit through accounting maneuvers, cuts, additional fees, delayed payments and a revamped plan to sell state properties. Several solutions could face legal challenges that threaten their viability. Gov. Jerry Brown suggested Monday he would consider signing a Democratic budget that relies on such solutions despite his previous opposition to proposals he considered “budget gimmicks.”
Democrats have been hungry for tax increases since at least February. They would have gone at it alone earlier, were it not for the fact that Republicans gained ground in last year’s election; even Democrats feel voters’ widespread tax weariness. Republican determination to focus budget negotiations on spending cuts has also been emboldened by hard-working conservative opponents to new taxes.
Nevertheless, the liberal resistance to spending cuts remained strong. As the budget deadline approached, their zest for big government collided with their fear of not getting paid if the budget was delayed beyond June 15. At one point, they tried to intimidate Republicans into a tax-hiking budget agreement by threatening to concentrate spending cuts to legislative districts with Republican majority.
Such high-pitched rhetoric, undoubtedly driven by spending addiction, is unbecoming of state legislators. A much more sober approach would be to look at the structural driving forces behind California’s notorious budget problems: lavish public worker benefits, virtually endless entitlement programs and heavy dependency on federally-sponsored spending programs.
The Democratic fight to raise taxes is geared entirely toward saving all these spending programs, despite the fact that years of deficits have proven such programs to be fiscally unsustainable. It is time for California voters to put a foot down and go beyond just demanding a budget on time. The next step should be to demand that legislators slim down the size of state government and concentrate it to its essential functions: the protection if life, liberty and property.
