Does anyone really believe that when the final budget deals are signed, California is going to eliminate all welfare payments? What about red-penciling Cal Grant college scholarships? Or eliminating health insurance for low-income children?
Well, to listen to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans to close the state’s yawning $24 billion budget gap, he’s looking for the Legislature to make all those trims and more and get it done by the end of the month, please.
But does the governor really expect these particular cuts to be made, or is he trying to raise to raise a clamor from outraged Californians to show legislators just how grim the state’s budget situation really is?
People who study this type of stuff call it the Washington Monument ploy: a bureaucratic maneuver that suggests the most drastic and dramatic cuts possible – like closing the Washington Monument – and warns politicians that this is what’s going to happen unless they come up with an alternative.
In April, for example, Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly sent local police chiefs a note saying that because of budget cuts, his office would no longer prosecute a laundry list of minor crimes, including shoplifting, vandalism, low-end drug cases and all but the most dangerous traffic offenses.
The prospect of hanging the equivalent of a “Graffiti Artists and Drug Users Welcome” sign over the county brought instant howls from both cops and voters. Within days, county supervisors called an emergency meeting and promised Kochly that they would work to find him some money.
The district attorney then announced that he’d managed to come up with the cash needed to keep prosecuting those crimes until the fall, which curiously enough is when the supervisors said they’d have a fix for his department’s money problems.
Now there was no argument that Kochly’s department was facing a financial crunch. But until he put those problems in stark terms that everyone – including, most importantly, voters – could understand, the bureaucratic train was moving slowly.
So when Schwarzenegger announced his proposed cuts, he put out an absolute worst case scenario, chock-full not only of reductions that the Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature don’t like, but also of fixes they flat out, no way, no how, are going to let happen.
Maybe Republicans don’t have any problem with eliminating the CalWorks welfare program or cutting the pay of state workers. But how do they feel about boosting state income tax withholding by 10 percent or letting thousands of low-risk offenders out of prison to save money?
Democrats might be willing to “borrow” nearly $2 billion from cities and counties or reduce Medi-Cal payments to participating hospitals. But what about huge cuts in payments to state schools or eliminating in-home assistance to many of the state’s poorest elderly and disabled residents?
And what’s going to happen when legislators started getting flooded with e-mails from constituents who are beginning to realize that the cutbacks could cost their kids a spot at a state college or that when they call the Poison Center after the baby swallows some aspirin all they’re going to get in a “number not in service” message?
Schwarzenegger has the easier part of the budget dance right now, since all he has to do is show the Legislature a way – one way – to make the books balance. And if the other politicians don’t like it, well, let’s see your plan. And find the votes for it.
It’s a little like the farmer who, when asked how to get a mule to work, cracked the critter over the head with a stick.
“First,” he said, “you have to get his attention.”
With his devastating list of suggested budget cuts, the governor now has everyone’s attention.
John Wildermuth is a long-time writer on California politics.