Author: John Wildermuth

The news is that the state Senate and the Assembly will take up the budget today.

The question is: what budget?

Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget calls for closing the state’s $26.5 billion deficit with a combination of program cuts, funding shifts and a June ballot measure that would extend some $12 billion to $14 billion in taxes and fees for five years.

Well, the Legislature’s Democrats have done their part, approving most of the cuts Brown has called for. And the governor has managed to figure out enough budget deals and program transfers (which the uninitiated might describe as gimmicks) to narrow the gap a bit more.

But unless Brown has a couple of secret GOP votes tucked into his back pocket, he’s still short of the two-thirds of the Legislature needed to put that budget measure on the special election ballot.

Let’s return for a moment to those thrilling days of yesteryear, all the way back to, well, last year’s governor’s race.

For month after month, Republican Meg Whitman slammed Jerry Brown and the Democrats for what she argued was California’s dreadful business climate (Sure, the state had had a GOP governor for the previous seven years, but details, details).

Echoing Republican grumblings of years past, Whitman argued that California was bleeding jobs to business-friendly states like Arizona, Texas and Nevada, states with lower taxes, less environmental regulation, lower costs and generally better treatment of business types, both tycoons and entrepreneurs.

To hear Whitman and other Republicans talk, those states were the Promised Land for business, virtual Gardens of Eden for those American dreamers who wanted to create jobs and move this country back into a Golden Age of prosperity.

In politics, it’s often more important to pick your enemies than to choose your friends.

Gov. Jerry Brown has known that for years, which is why he’s been so careful picking his fights in Sacramento.

On the budget, for example, it’s not that the Republicans in the state Legislature are evil, it’s that they’re in thrall to a "no vote, no taxes" pledge straight out of Washington, D.C., that’s "not American. It’s not acceptable and it’s not loyalty to California."

Brown’s got no problem putting Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform minions on an enemies list, but he still needs some votes from GOP legislators to get his budget plan on a June ballot.

I suppose it’s too much to ask that the state’s brand-new redistricting commission be given a chance to do its job.

The 14-member commission, established by 2008’s Prop. 11, didn’t finish appointing all its members until the middle of December and has only held a handful of meetings. But the boo-birds already are out in force, accusing the commission of a partisan bias, a tilt against rural California, sneaky, single-source contracts and, just for the hell of it, general incompetence.

Yesterday, for example, in this very Fox and Hounds Daily blog Doug Jeffe provided a critique of the commission. You really don’t have to read past the headline: “Redistricting commission looks to be fiasco in the making.”

How upset do you think everyone would be if the commission had actually done something by now?

Here’s a quiz for California voters: What’s cheaper, $126 or free?

If we’re talking arithmetic, the answer’s easy. But if we’re talking politics, things aren’t so simple.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, he often flew across the state in his private jet, paying the tab from his own very deep pockets. Cost to the taxpayers: zero.

When Gov. Jerry Brown flew from Sacramento to Burbank last week to push his budget plan before the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, he flew by himself on Southwest Airlines. The bill for the state: $126 for the roundtrip fare (it’s normally $160, but Brown gets a senior discount).

In this case, it’s not the reality of the money but the symbolism of the plane ride that counts and there’s no politician better at using symbols than Jerry Brown.

You think it’s the weather?

For the second time in less than 18 months, one of California’s top elected officials is looking to jump ship in Sacramento in for the bright lights and freezing winters of Washington, D.C.

This time it’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen, whose political consultant told the Sacramento Bee that the veteran Democratic officeholder is “very, very seriously considering running for Congress” to replace Rep. Jane Harman.

When someone says “very” twice, you know it must be serious.

Harman, a centrist Democrat who is resigning to take over as president of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, represents the 36th Congressional District The Los Angeles district runs from San Pedro north to Marina del Rey, which Bowen represented as an assemblywoman and state senator.

California tealeaf readers looking for hints on the future of the state budget battle won’t find out much from poring over Jerry Brown’s brief State of the State message Monday night.

In 14 minutes or so, the governor repeated what he’s been saying since he was elected:

1. The state’s in a financial mess and tough action is needed. Right now.

2. Republicans and Democrats legislators are all going to be unhappy with his budget plan, so deal with it.

3. Californians deserve a chance to vote on whether they want more taxes or fewer services.

Add to that some upbeat sentences about making the state “a leader in job creation, renewable energy and state-of-the-art efficiency, innovation of all kinds” and the usual stirring claptrap about how wonderful life will be in the Golden State once this budget unpleasantness is behind us, and the governor had a perfectly serviceable speech that likely didn’t change a single vote in the Legislature.

Remember way back last February when Carly Fiorina suggested that California may want to think about filing for bankruptcy and the state’s political mavens erupted in peals of laughter?

“Rookie mistake,” they solemnly declared. “Everyone knows states can’t declare bankruptcy.”

Time to stop laughing. Turns out that the GOP Senate candidate might not have been wrong, just early.

A New York Times story last week reported that some Washington Republicans are quietly looking into the possibility of changing the federal bankruptcy law to let states file for protection from their creditors, as cities and counties have been able to do since the 1930s. The idea is that by filing for bankruptcy, states can unilaterally dump union contracts, slash pension plans and make other needed cuts to get out from under their crushing debts.

There was only one sour note when Democrat Darrell Steinberg, the state Senate’s boss, bounced Republican Tom Berryhill from his post as chairman of the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee last week for telling reporters that the state budget “is really not our (Republicans’) problem.”

It should have been Republican Bob Dutton, the Senate minority leader, who slapped Berryhill upside the head.

The absolute last thing California Republicans need right now is to be seen as the party that really doesn’t care about the budget, the politicians who are perfectly content to sit back and just say no to whatever the Democrats come up with.

Picture Rome, Nero and a fiddle.

Ever since he was elected in November, Gov. Jerry Brown has been warning Californians that the only way out of the state’s financial mess is for everyone to pull together.