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.
We should not and I will not cut a dollar from education, a dollar from health care, a dollar from public safety, or a dollar from state parks without first cutting the Waste Management Board.
Reaction: Given Schwarzenegger’s history of calling for reorganization and cuts in boards – and then not following through – it will be interesting to see if he stands firm on this. He’s right to take the stand. While wasteful boards (pun intended) are small blips on the budget picture, they have tremendous symbolic value to voters worried about waste.
“We are now back to the same level of revenues we had in 2003. And when you adjust for inflation and population, we’re back to the level of the late 90’s.”
Reaction: The governor was not a great student as an Austrian schoolboy, but old teachers and classmates say he was always very good in math. It shows.
Many smart people on the right, including Ray Haynes and Meg Whitman, have been making the argument that the state should go back to budgets from earlier in the decade. They argue we could simply live as we did then. Schwarzenegger corrects them here, by pointing out that with the state’s population and inflation growth, going back to a 2003 budget, for example, would actually take levels of spending even further back. This is a bit of mathematics that seems to escape many Republicans.
“Last week, Paul Krugman from the New York Times wrote that California is in a state of paralysis…and that our political system has failed to rise to the occasion. People are writing California off. They are talking about the end of the California Dream. They don’t believe that we in this room have the courage and determination to do what needs to be done or that the state is manageable. Let’s prove all the pundits wrong.”
Reaction: Mike Murphy, where are you? And did you ever imagine that the candidate you helped elect governor of California in 2003 would be quoting the New York Times’ most liberal columnist in a speech to a joint session of the legislature?
That said, I think I’m one of those cynical pundits the governor is talking about, though I do feel slightly misrepresented here It’s not that I believe that we’ve reached the end of the California dream. But I do believe there is no way the legislature and the governor, with the two-thirds requirement on budget and tax increases in place, can balance the budget. They’ll need help.
Also, I strongly suspect that the governor, despite his words here, agrees with that assessment – at least in those small pessimistic pockets of his overly optimistic body. Which is why he is offering an all-cuts budget proposal. He doesn’t want to make those cuts. He’s instead using the all-cuts budget to put pressure on Congress and President Obama to step in and help the state out. This is a big half-bluff—there will have to be big, bad cuts, but not as big or as bad as he has proposed.
This interpretation of the governor’s strategy is supported by the following passage from the speech…
Let’s not think just in the short-term. Let’s think about the long-term, let’s think big and lay a new foundation for California’s future.
Note the phrase “new foundation.” Hmmm. That’s the phrase that President Obama has chosen to describe the new America he is trying to build. It’s almost as though the governor is trying to get the president’s attention. There’s a coded message there, and that message is:
“Help us, Barack. Or else I’m totally screwed.”