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.
Republicans say they want a bunch of that money to go the
schools, which would rob Brown and his fellow Democrats of the issue they had
hoped to use to win voter approval for extending the temporary income, car and
sales taxes that are expiring.
Brown says he favors a spending cap, which Republicans have
been pushing for. But he has not been specific about the details, which are
crucial. He says he favors public employee pension reform and he believes it is
inevitable, anyway, because he thinks it will be on the ballot in 2012.
But none of that really moves the ball forward in the
Legislature from where it was before the governor released his revision. He
says some of the revenue surge should go to education, and some to make up for
past or proposed cuts and funding shifts that now won’t happen. Some of the
money will have to replace the revenue from the extension of the income tax
surcharge for this year, which is now off the table.
"This is a program that’s honest, it’s all laid out there
and I think it makes sense for California," Brown told reporters.
He said a competing Republican plan that would not extend
the temporary taxes would leave the state with a worse deficit than it has
today.
If the taxes are not extended, Brown said, the cuts required
to balance the budget would set off a "war of all against all" by interest
groups seeking to avoid the pain.
"If this thing falls apart, there will be all manner of
untoward outcomes and animosities and division," Brown said. "I think it will
be very divisive for California. I think we will flounder."
Although Brown said he was willing to accept a spending
limit and cuts in public employee pensions to get the tax extensions he is
proposing, Republicans indicated that they will be even more opposed to his tax
plan than before.
"Rather than curbing government spending, the
governor’s revised budget still sets the state on a course of excessive
spending growth in the future – spending that relies on tax increases,"
said Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton. "With $6.6 billion in new
revenues…we don’t need, and it’s ridiculous to ask voters for, five years of
new taxes."
Daniel Weintraub is
editor of the California Health Report at www.healthycal.org