Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Are We the Most Dysfunctional of All?

Here’s a quiz.

Name the state that has a legislature and governor contemplating making draconian cuts to education programs and eliminating some health and human services programs.

Name the state that is planning to pull back money from county and municipal governments and sell state assets (including three prisons) to deal with a record budget deficit.

Name the state where a moderate Republican governor is stuck on the idea of securitizing state lottery revenues to paper over the deficit.

Where the governor is fighting with legislative Republicans are fighting over the governor’s plan to raise taxes, including a one-cent sales tax. Where Republicans are calling that a betrayal of conservative values.

Where Democrats are mad at the governor for using the crisis to try to promote a spending limit.

Where the governor is getting nowhere with any of these proposals, and is sinking fast in popularity.

‘Help Us, Barack’

Let’s look quickly at a couple of the most interesting parts of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s speech:

On what voters were saying in the special election: "And that message was clear: Do your job. Don’t come to us with these complex issues. Live within your means. Get rid of the waste and inefficiencies. And don’t raise taxes."

My reaction: if only the message was as clear as Schwarzenegger says. Then the governor might have a chance of getting the state out of the crisis. But the message wasn’t at all clear. The voters said no overwhelmingly, but for very different reasons. Some voters were sending a strong anti-tax message. But others were sending a very different message — that they didn’t like budget cuts and wanted more in taxation. (David Binder’s exit polling on this for the union side of No of 1A shows this). And some voters appeared to be sending the message that they’re confused.

Such mixed messages are precisely what makes this state so hard to govern. And these messages also will make it nearly impossible for the legislature and the governor to come together to resolve the current crisis themselves. As I’ve predicted here previously, they’ll need the feds eventually to help out.

Why The Two-Thirds Requirement Produces MORE Spending

As I’ve noted here before, there’s a problem of logic at the heart of much conservative commentary about the California budget. Conservatives tell us that the state’s budget system has produced out-of-control spending. Fair enough. But conservatives tell us that the core of that system – the super majority requirement for passing budgets and raising taxes – must be preserved at all costs to protect against out-of-control spending.

Both of those things can’t be true.

This weekend, I came across a 1998 report from the California Citizens Budget Commission, published by the non-partisan Center for Governmental Studies, in Los Angeles. That report found that the two-thirds requirement does not restrain spending. If anything, what evidence there was suggested that California’s two-thirds requirement produces more spending.

Meg Whitman: First Impressions

The last time I found myself in a hotel with a political novice running for governor, it was September 2003 and Arnold Schwarzenegger and I were in a penthouse suite of the Mission Inn in Riverside. He teased me about my shorts (it was 104 degrees outside), and he spent most of our 20-minute conversation filibustering and not saying anything specific about policy. (The one thing he did say – that he would protect the Prop 98 funding guarantee with his life – turned out to be a mistake.)

Older if not wiser, I wore a tie to meet Meg Whitman (and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, who was in town to endorse her) in an outdoor patio at the Century Plaza Thursday morning. And she was nothing if not specific. In 25 minutes, she dived eagerly into the weeds of policy – individual and insurer mandates on health care, collective bargaining with public employees, charter school policy, and procurement.

So If We Take Your Terrorists…

President Obama has a problem. He’s promised to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, but is finding it hard to find a place to put them. States all over the union are saying not in my backyard.

California has a problem. It needs federal loan guarantees for its short-term cash flow borrowing. But President Obama and members of Congress are saying – at least right now – that such assistance isn’t forthcoming. The other 49 states, after all, don’t want to bail out California.

Are these two completely unrelated problems?

Or a match made in heaven?

Here’s the deal, modestly proposed: President Obama, we’ll solve your problem if you’ll solve ours.

Golden State Bailout?

A piece I penned in today’s New York Times, entitled Golden State Bailout, grew out of some reporting I did for a post at Fox&Hounds a few weeks ago. Despite all of today’s back and forth, the case for the state to receive federal loan guarantees for its short-term borrowing is a very easy one. Such borrowing would keep the state from falling off the cliff, and there’s virtually no risk — and absolutely no cost — to the treasury. In fact, California will have to pay a fee.

That said, for political and policy reasons (namely, that California appears unable to govern itself), the feds should attach major conditions to guarantees. Essentially, the feds should use its leverage on the short-term cash flow problem to force the state to adopt a real budget plan that fixes the long-term, structural deficit.

Memo to California Reformers: Breathe and Read Some History

In the 24 hours after the election, would-be reformers around California have turned on a fire hose of proposals on the media and the public.

Everyone’s selling a solution. Higher taxes. Lower taxes. Tax reform. Spending limits. A lifting of spending programs. Reality-based budgeting. Zero-based budget. Performance-based budgeting. Marijuana-induced budgeting. A new ballot initiative that would require legislators to read the bills before they vote.

And most of all, a California constitutional convention.

Let’s call a time out and breathe. Here’s my own reform proposal for the reformers. Before proposing anything, open up Carey McWilliams 1949 classic, “California: The Great Exception.” You don’t have to read the whole thing, but I’m assigning all of you Chapter 10, entitled “Perilous Remedies for Present Evils.” California has a penchant for the same.

Why Meg Is Right to Lay Low

Several times a week, I read about how terrible, just terrible it is that Meg Whitman is declining interviews from California reporters, skipping debates, and not behaving like a serious candidate for governor.

Steve Poizner’s campaign has made this almost a daily drumbeat; “If Meg Whitman can’t stand up to questions, how can she stand up for California?” read part of a state from Poizner senior advisor Kevin Spillane last week. And over at Calbuzz, Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts are “fuming” about Meg’s “ducking serious questions from California political writers for months.”

Expect more of the same today, when her GOP rivals — Poizner and Tom Campbell–are scheduled to debate the measures on tomorrow’s special election ballot.

I have a bit of advice for the Meg bashers: Take a deep breath. And get a life.

The One Endorsement That Could Turn the Entire Special Election Around

All sorts of people and organizations are endorsing measures on next Tuesday’s special election ballot. While Props 1A through 1E appear headed for defeat, the measures seem to be winning the endorsement war, picking up support from most newspapers and elected officials. Both of California’s U.S. senators endorsed Props 1A and 1B this week.

But none of these endorsements seem to be making any difference in the polls. The public isn’t paying particularly close attention to the measures, and no one seems to much care what political leaders think about the measures.

In fact, there’s only one person in the entire whose opinion on ballot measures seems to matter to the public anymore. Who’s that, you ask?

Miss California Carrie Prejean.