If Republicans wouldn’t vote for an election on taxes, why would they vote for the taxes themselves?
The revised budget Gov. Jerry Brown released Monday does not
seem any more likely to win Republican votes than the governor’s original plan.
Brown is still pushing to extend billions of dollars in
expiring taxes, except now he wants the Legislature to vote directly on the
taxes rather than simply scheduling an election.
The election would come later, and voters would be asked to
ratify the Legislature’s decision.
But if Republicans wouldn’t vote for an election on taxes,
why would they vote for the taxes themselves?
That’s a tough sell for Brown. Making it even tougher,
ironically, is the $6.6 billion increase in the state’s revenue projection for
this year and next.
Wall of Debt
Governor Brown unveiled a new theme on Monday to sell his budget solution: the Wall of Debt.
This approach targets Republicans and other voters skeptical of the need for tax extensions.
- The Governor specifically calls out the nearly $35 billion in borrowing and gimmicks devised by previous Administrations and Legislatures to paper over earlier deficits. The subliminal message: “Never again.”
- The debt retirement theme provides a landing zone for Republican legislators who might agree to tax extensions in return for a spending cap, where any revenues above the cap could be used to retire budgetary borrowing. The Governor expressed his support yesterday for an undefined spending cap.
- Raising the debt issue also provides a platform from which the Governor could insist on aggressive reforms in state and local pension obligations. Actuaries peg the unfunded liabilities of the two big state pension systems north of $150 billion. This off-budget debt was recently noted by Standard and Poor’s as a further threat to California’s anemic credit rating.
- Finally, the overall capacity of the government to take on debt will be front and center as the Congress debates whether and how to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling.
Long Beach City Council Should Oppose Bag Tax
It
seems like we can’t turn on the news without hearing about skyrocketing gas
prices, California’s persistent double-digit unemployment rate, and families
struggling to make ends meet.
The
cost of groceries continues to climb everyday as items such as dish soap,
produce, and dairy are marked up because of rising commodity prices.
In
this climate of uncertainty, every nickel counts. Yet efforts to raise taxes
middle and lower income families continue.
One of them is coming before the Long Beach City Council in just a
matter of days.
At
their meeting on tonight, the Council will vote on a proposal to ban recyclable
plastic grocery bags and impose a ten-cent tax on paper bags at the checkout
stand. Put simply, a yes vote on this
proposal is a vote to increase taxes that brings with it little promise of
benefit to Long Beach residents, puts hundreds of manufacturing jobs at risk,
and does nothing to strengthen our recycling infrastructure.
Prop. 14 is likely to leave voters with little choice
Today is election day for voters in the 36th Congressional District on the West end of Los Angeles County. This District’s partisan voter registration gives a big edge to Democrats, and whether one or two Dems make the runoff, it is very unlikely that the successor to Jane Harman will not come from her same political party.
But my intention with this post is not to provide in-depth political analysis of the CD 36 Special Election — I’m happy to leave that kind of cut-up to Allan Hoffenblum or Tony Quinn. I actually wanted to use today, election day, to bitterly complain about the new rules of engagement with passage of Proposition 14. Specifically, I want to lament the passing of the spirited primary process where candidates of each party were able to wage strong campaigns against one another, assured that when the dust settled, each party would put forward it’s top vote-getter against the nominees of other parties.
Brown Boxes In Own Party
For all the headlines about how Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget
gave a funding boost to schools, the real news of his May revise press
conference was his full-throated, unqualified endorsement of a spending cap.
Brown
didn’t get into any details, but he said clearly that a cap was needed to give
voters reassurance that if they were to raise taxes, the extra money would be
spent prudently. "We need a spending limit. We definitely should put a cap in,"
he said, adding: "That would give voters assurance."
This
statement puts Democrats in a box. They’ve pushed for temporary tax extensions
that are clean, without a spending limit attached. In 2009, when presented with
a rainy day fund that might limit spending in combination with temporary tax
extensions, many Democrats and unions voted against the whole package. They
hated spending restriction more than they liked the taxes.