Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says the solution to fixing California’s governance problems starts with a part-time legislature. Gingrich, who was in Orange County last night speaking at the New Majority’s Tenth Anniversary celebration, argued that term limits did not work, simply ceding power to lobbyists and bureaucrats.
Now running a think tank called American Solutions, Gingrich said he studies Sacramento, along with the capitols of New York and New Jersey, to see what is wrong with governance in America.
California’s problems start and stop with the control special interests have over the legislature, he said. Calling the public employee unions the modern day version of the railroads from the early 20th century that caused Governor Hiram Johnson to champion the initiative process to get around the legislature, Gingrich said we are in similar times to that progressive era when the people took more control over government.
Saying no one has come close to dealing with the major structural changes needed to right the ship in the Golden State, Gingrich suggested it would take a bold gubernatorial candidate leading a ticket of reformers to wrest the power away from the lobbyists and unions that control the capitol. He even suggested a slogan to illustrate the problem: Sacramento versus the rest of the state.
Gingrich said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not handle the problem because it was bigger than he thought it would be. Later asked about the key May 19 ballot measure, Proposition 1A, that would establish a revenue limit but also require temporary taxes to be extended, Gingrich was non-committal. He suggested that if voters thought the spending limit would work they should vote yes; if not, vote no.
He said the key question voters must ask themselves both in California and nationally is: How big do you want government to be?
Declaring that the $9-trillion in debt run up by President Barack Obama might well lead to his downfall, Gingrich compared Obama to President Jimmy Carter, a one-term president. Along with debt, a weak foreign policy and inflation, Obama like Carter before him, Gingrich argued, was opening the door for a Republican comeback.