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.
How’s that? A two-thirds requirement gives more power to more legislators. That is, more votes are needed to pass a budget. So more lawmakers have more opportunities to demand extra spending to win their vote.
Or to put it another way: in a two-thirds system, there are more votes to buy.
Here are some quotes on two-thirds from the report:
"Defended as a restraint on spending, there is no clear evidence that this supermajority requirement does, in fact, have that effect. Legislators can as easily withhold votes to secure increases in spending for their favorite programs as they can secure spending reductions…Rather than holding down spending, the two-thirds vote requirement places the power to control or block the budget into the hands of a small minority in either house of the Legislature–thereby promoting gridlock and enhancing special interest group influence."
So in defending the two-thirds requirement, Republicans may be making it easier to increase the size of government. Go figure.