This may be a stretch, but has anyone else seen a possible analogy between NASA’s astounding discovery of arsenic gulping microbes and a solution to California’s budget problems? On the eve of Jerry Brown’s budget summit, I read up on the discovery made in California’s own Mono Lake.
Here was something no one expected: life did not contain the assumed six essential elements of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon and phosphorus. In place of phosphorus was the toxic substance arsenic. Yet, life existed with this new array of elements.
The analogy that jumped to mind: Can California redo the way it budgets changing the assumed rules that have governed the debate for so many years? Can lawmakers take elements that one interest group or another sees as toxic and turn those elements into part of a solution to solve the state’s problems?
Jerry Brown and his traveling budget show may be taking the first step in that direction today as he holds a budget seminar in Sacramento. The governor-elect is hosting legislators, statewide elected officials and 1,200 local officials at the event. It is the first step in trying to educate the public to the magnitude of California’s budget crisis.
Voters in recent polls have indicated that California government wastes too much money. They indicated that simply cutting waste and running a more-efficient government could solve the state budget problems. I expect Brown wants to disabuse the voters of this notion and lay out difficult facts. Whether the word will reach the mass of voters who will not attend the summit and may see only a minute or two report on TV is another question.
I have seen the results of recent focus groups in which voters a month away from the election cannot tell you much about the November ballot measures or how they even voted. It will take a massive education campaign for the voters to understand details of the budget and possible solutions.
It is hard to imagine that Brown and the legislators can find solutions to the state’s budget problems without resorting to new thinking on the what government is doing and what it needs to do and how much it costs. A fresh approach will certainly upset what we know on how we must budget. But, if the rules change, new approaches may succeed, even if that means some toxic measure is part of the solution.
The problem for the new governor is that when someone reads the previous sentence he or she probably conjures up what that toxic solution might be depending on his or her ideology or political orientation. Is that toxic solution tax increases? Or is it across the board cuts? Or elimination of programs?
Perhaps, Brown is headed toward creating a fiscal commission just as the White House did recently to offer tough medicine to deal with the U.S. deficit. The fiscal commission co-chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson offered suggestions that included changes to what many would argue are third-rail issues in American politics including cuts in military spending, increasing the age for Social Security eligibility, and altering the mortgage deduction.
It seems unlikely that a solution to the budget crisis that includes what any number of powerful interest groups consider a toxic element would be readily accepted. Then again it was considered impossible that life could exist with arsenic as a basic element.