Dan Walters: Gubernatorial rivals' plans to handle deficit don't pencil out (California)

Sacramento Bee ^ | April 11, 2006 | Dan Walters

[calcowgirl]

(snip)

Schwarzenegger has by all indications given up on balancing the budget. Although revenues are growing strongly, he seems bent on spending all of the new money and then some and projects a $6 billion operational deficit in his 2006-07 budget, with income-outgo gaps continuing indefinitely. He blames Capitol politics and mandated spending for the continuing deficits and says he needs the authority that voters refused to give him last year to unilaterally make spending cuts.

Treasurer Phil Angelides, one of the Democratic hopefuls, insists that he has a plan to both close the deficit and "fully fund" public education, the single largest item in the state budget, while belittling his Democratic rival, Controller Steve Westly. "He has no plan ... like Mr. Schwarzenegger," Angelides said last week.

If Angelides has a plan, however, he's not sharing it. He chants a mantra about closing "corporate tax loopholes" and taxing the wealthy and says, "We cannot only afford to do this, but we must do it." But when pressed for specifics, Angelides replies only with another chant. He would appear to be advocating about $10 billion a year in new taxes, if one adds up all his promises, but the very few revenue specifics his campaign mentions add up to chicken feed.

(snip)

Westly is even less specific about how he would manage the state's finances. He's talked about reconfiguring the state lottery to give more money to schools, but the third of lottery revenues (about $1 billion a year) that goes to schools now is less than 2 percent of education financing, so any rejiggering would be a drop in the bucket. Westly has also touted going after tax scofflaws... But there's no real potential for generating the multibillion-dollar annual revenues that fully closing the structural deficit would demand.

[forester]

The Legislature will consider about 2,500 bills per year. Interestingly enough, each committee will sit dormant for about 3 months, and then will consider their entire calendar of bills in just 3 weeks. As a result, each bill will only get about 10 minutes of discussion. That means that proponents and opponents get about 3 minutes each to say why they like or don’t like the bill, and the Legislator usually gets about 4 minutes to say why he or she introduced the bill. The committee then gets to ask questions, which are usually interrupted by the committee chair constantly reminding everyone that the committee has a long calendar, and, if everyone keeps asking questions, the committee will be there all night. Being human, the members of the committee usually want to get out of the meeting.

The process is broken....

[goldstategop]

Nothing is stopping Arnold from using his item line veto or just vetoing spending bills. Or even better: just submit a balanced budget and dare the State Legislature to bust it. It can be done; the will to do it just isn't there.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[calcowgirl]

That was an excellent article by Haynes! It was also posted here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613107/posts

[calcowgirl]

...the will to do it just isn't there.

I totally agree. The voters showed they had the will by passing the Recall. Unfortunately, none of the candidates for Governor have shown they have that will, despite past promises to do so.