(CA)Destructive Govt:The Capitol’s Careening Ruling Class and the Wreckage It Is Leaving in Its Wake

When liberal Democrats took control of the California Legislature following the 1998 general election, the state’s treasury was flush with a surplus that approached $12 billion. State budget general-fund spending in 1999 was $57 billion. Today, just over four years later, not only has the $12 billion surplus been exhausted, but general fund budget spending exceeds $77 billion. This means that beside depleting a $12 billion surplus, the liberal majority drove up annual spending over four years by $20 billion. Indeed, the liberals’ spending binge now has California facing an estimated $38 billion deficit. Responses like “mind-boggling” and “breathtaking” are not exaggerations when the full import of this precarious state of affairs is recognized.

If legislators who govern the “world’s sixth largest economy” have responsibilities comparable to the CEOs of major corporations, as they purport to have, the same standards of accountability should apply, which raises the question, “How could this have happened?” The answer is really quite simple. By definition, liberals are as undisciplined when spending the taxpayers’ money (in liberal speak, that’s “public money”) as the child who begs his parent for every item in the supermarket that catches his attention.

Between 1999 and 2003, California’s population plus inflation grew by a rate of 21 percent. During the same period, the state’s revenues grew 28 percent. Had state spending over these four years grown the same 21 percent as population plus inflation, the excess seven percent in revenues could have been invested as a surplus, worth as much as $20 billion today. But instead, the liberals who have controlled the legislature these past four years increased spending by a whopping 36 percent, insuring the imminency of a technical state of bankruptcy.

It’s not that they weren’t frequently warned of the certain consequences of their spendthrift ways. On one occasion during debate of the Budget Act in June, 2002, conservative Senator Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), a recognized expert on state fiscal policy, lectured his liberal colleagues: “Last year and the year before last, we warned you that if you spend every dime that comes in during the good years, you’ll be in serious trouble in the bad ones. You ignored those warnings and this was the genesis of the crisis we now face.”

In January, 2002, conservative fiscal expert, Senator Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta) – now Assemblyman Haynes – opposed a bill tripling the car tax, admonishing his liberal Democrat colleagues: “You have a spending addiction! And what we’re saying is we’re going to do the right thing, and we’re not going to give you – at least willingly, more of the drug. We are not going to let you destroy yourselves and destroy this state through your addiction. We are going to say ‘No!’ and when you finally face the problem, and when you finally look at the people in the State of California and say you’ve got a problem, that’s when we’ll say, ‘okay, let’s start dealing with . . . your spending addiction.” Fortunately, Assemblyman Haynes and his Republican colleagues managed to kill that car tax bill. Regrettably, the liberals who control the legislature have yet to acknowledge their spending addiction.

For decades liberals have sought the opportunity to govern without restraints. “If only the voters would give us the freedom to spend and the power to tax, we would demonstrate how liberalism provides the greatest good for the largest number,” they’ve mused. Never mind that Western Europe’s firm embrace of this tax and spend approach has resulted in societal addiction to mediocre cradle-to-grave government benefits, funded by taxes amounting to as much as 75 percent of personal income.

For liberals, taxes are – with apologies to the late Assembly Speaker, Jesse Unruh – the “mother’s milk” of spending. Next to spending the taxpayers’ money, liberals find nothing more gratifying than imposing taxes. Taxing and spending remain liberal lawmakers’ trusty formula for redistributing the wealth, taking it primarily through taxes on above-average income-earners, business people, property owners, and other producers, and spending the revenues on an assortment of programs and causes mainly benefitting non-producers. During the past four years, the liberals controlling the California Legislature have proposed many new and creative ways to tax or impose “fees” to off-set the result of their ongoing spending binge. As the Orange County Recorder recently reported, “Republicans have a list of at least 50 new taxes and fees proposed by Democrats, mainly to fund new programs.” The California Taxpayers Association says these proposals would total $60 billion.

Tax-enthusiastic liberals have railed for years against the state constitutional provision (added by Proposition 13) that requires a two-thirds vote of both legislative houses for new or increased state taxes. With Republicans traditionally opposing higher taxes, and liberals, though holding a two-house majority, not controlling 66 percent in either Assembly or Senate, Democrats have had some difficulty imposing tax hikes. Now the liberals controlling the Democrat caucuses of both houses have introduced eight separate measures (six Assembly constitutional amendments and two Senate amendments) to reduce the “two-thirds” legislative approval requirement to a simple majority vote in both houses. Because legislative constitutional amendments also must be approved by a two-thirds vote, these measures are unlikely to pass this session.

Outside the legislature, however, a coalition of labor, business, and state and local government officials are advancing an initiative constitutional amendment to drop the two-thirds requirement to 55 percent. Although being marketed as a reasonable compromise between the current super-majority requirement and the simple-majority proposals, it should be recognized that if the 55 percent measure were currently in effect, liberals controlling both houses could enact any or all of their 50 pending tax proposals. That should scare any taxpayer who does not believe he deserves to pay more taxes because liberals cannot control their spending habits.

After more than four years of uncontested liberal control of the legislature, who – other than perhaps their major political supporters and beneficiaries, the labor unions – would describe California as healthy, better governed, or moving in the right direction? If the 13th annual Business Climate Survey sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and California Business Roundtable is any indication, very few. Ninety-three percent of companies doing business in the state – that is, those private firms, large, medium, and small, that employ 82.2 % of all California’s working people (excluding farm workers) – believe that California is moving in the “wrong direction.” Ninety percent feel that business conditions are “worse” than two years ago, while 46 percent and 41 percent, respectively, believe the state’s economy will “stay about the same,” or “worsen” during the next six months. The Business Roundtable’s chairman described the current level of pessimism among the state’s primary employer community as the worse in the survey’s 12-year history.

It’s not that liberal politicians haven’t held political sway in the capitol at earlier times. When I was elected to the state Assembly in 1976 (the first election after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency), Democrats controlled both branches even more overwhelmingly than now, occupying 57 of the 80 Assembly seats and 27 of 40 Senate seats. Jerry Brown was Governor, Jim Mills was Senate leader, and the Assembly Speaker was Leo McCarthy, a San Francisco liberal, most of whose committee chairs were unabashed liberals, such as Willie Brown, John Vasconcellos, Howard Berman, and Bill Lockyer. Yet, because moderate Democrats outnumbered, though they did not outrank, their liberal colleagues, the Assembly’s work product, while certainly not to the liking of Republican members like myself, was appreciably less liberal than Speaker McCarthy and his leadership team would have preferred. McCarthy recognized that he could steadily ratchet California’s public policy toward the left, but he had to be careful not to place his moderate Democrat members in political jeopardy in their districts by pushing them to support his liberal agenda.

The same was true during liberal San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown’s seven sessions (14 years) as Speaker. Brown knew it would be impractical to force moderate Democrats to support his brand of liberalism, endangering his leadership and, possibly, his Party’s control of the house. California voters’ consistent approval of conservative measures, including Proposition 13 (1978), the Victims’ Bill of Rights (1982), the elimination of the state inheritance tax (1982), and even more, their overwhelming 1986 vote to oust Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other liberal Supreme Court justices, reminded both McCarthy and Brown where political reality drew the line on their brand of liberalism.

Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R- Tahoe City), a 17-year veteran of both legislative houses, describes current Assembly and Senate Democrats as “the most liberal and arrogant” group with whom he’s ever worked. Speakers McCarthy and Brown, though they frequently displayed the arrogance of power, were held in check by fear of losing political control of the Assembly. The same held true in the Senate.

But today’s mission-focused liberals know no such fear. They regard their dominant numbers as a mandate. They feed off one another’s commitment to liberal causes. The possibility that term limits may interfere with achieving their goals only intensifies their zeal. According to the respected British weekly, The Economist, California, led by a state Democrat Party “controlled by its most extreme elements,” is increasingly becoming the “left-out coast.” And columnist Dan Walters recently wrote that “even blase Capitol lobbyists are shaking their heads these days at what they regard as a complete breakdown of the process, a semi-anarchy in which complex measures are zipped through committees with not even a pretense of dialogue with those affected by their provisions.” One veteran lobbyist told Walters: “I’ve never seen it this bad. Not only won’t they let us talk at hearings, but we can’t even talk to their staffs. They just want to push stuff through.”

The result is that monumental crises are piling up for the state while measures to address them constructively receive hostile treatment in committee, or no treatment at all. Take California’s antiquated, abuse-ridden workers’ compensation system, for example. Since 1995, when statewide private and public employer-paid workers’ comp premiums amounted to $5.7 billion, an escalation of fabricated employee injuries, medical service-provider overcharges, and ambulance-chasing attorney practices have driven statewide employer premiums to $15 billion today. Experts suggest that increases to $20 billion can be expected within the next six months. In a recent Assembly Insurance Committee hearing, where five major workers’ compensation reform measures were pending, even the state’s Democrat Insurance Commissioner testified to the workers’ compensation system’s imminent collapse if legislative reform was not quickly forthcoming. Within the hour, the committee’s liberal majority killed all five of the measures that would have assisted the state’s public and private employers, as well as millions of their employees, to avoid the coming effects of this crisis.

The 2001 electrical energy crisis resulted from 1996 legislation that purported to “de-regulate” an historically, fully-regulated electricity-generation industry. But this supposed “deregulation,” through political compromise with liberal Democrats, really established a hybrid system of price controls under the authority of the California Public Utilities Commission. When wholesale energy costs increased in 2001, utility companies were prohibited by the CPUC from passing on to consumers their real electricity costs, causing several to become insolvent. Democrats recently passed an energy proposal out of Senate Energy committee (on a party-line vote) that fully re-regulates the state’s electrical energy market, restoring the pre-1996 monopolistic structure under which Californians paid some of the highest electricity rates in the nation. (In what is a hopeful exception to the liberals’ domination of the committee process, a more competitive, free-market-oriented proposal authored by a Republican, offering utility companies an incentive to invest in California energy generation, is also slowly making its way through the Assembly committees.)

Beside the historic budget deficit, the severely-ailing worker’s compensation system, and the state’s dismal electrical energy market, several less-publicized, but equally serious crises confront California government: the mismanaged, fraud-ridden State Disability Insurance system, the child-neglecting foster care system, the woefully inadequate child support collection system, the hugely error-prone food stamp program, and the Medi-Cal program. Researchers estimate that Medi-Cal alone loses as much as $10 billion to fraud annually. The liberal-Democrat majority is doing little to address any of these crises.

On the other hand, alongside this massive legislative passivity, hundreds of bills advancing irresponsible, excessively costly, and outright silly liberal notions move briskly through the legislative process. The Assembly recently passed a bill mandating fines of up to $150,000 against business owners – even small men’s and women’s clothing stores, Bible bookstores, and nonprofit organizations like the Boy Scouts – for refusing to hire cross-dressing and transsexual job applicants. In a classic example of liberal fuzzy-mindedness, the bill’s San Francisco author declared on the Assembly floor that “Every Californian deserves the right to a job and to a home. We must do everything in our power to protect such fundamental human rights.”

Two bills came up for a vote recently in the Assembly Higher Education Committee. One bill, authored by a Republican legislator, sought to help young men and women serving in the National Guard qualify for Cal Grants – a state-funded scholarship awarded to Californians needing financial help attending college in the state. The other bill, carried by a liberal Democrat, sought to make the same Cal Grants scholarships available to persons who entered the country illegally. Not surprisingly, the liberal-dominated Higher Education Committee approved the bill granting benefits to persons in California illegally, and killed the measure to assist young people who joined the National Guard.

A measure banning the sale of carbonated beverages on all public school campuses passed the Senate recently. Liberals embrace the ban, arguing that 30 percent of the state’s children are overweight and raising worries about “tooth decay, pre-diabetes, and high insulin loads.” But why then single out the sale of sodas to ban (students who want a soda may continue to bring them on campus) while allowing other food items with far greater fat and sugar content to be served or sold on campus? This measure seems to be less about overweight kids than about advancing the liberal idea that people have no will-power and cannot decide what is good or bad for themselves without the intrusive hand of government.

Senator Richard Alarcon (D-Van Nuys), one of the Legislature’s most liberal members, has created – and will himself chair – a special Senate committee on “the Status of Ending Poverty in California.” Alarcon dreams of achieving universal prosperity by pursuing the ephemeral question – “what causes poverty?” Assemblyman Tim Leslie believes this project is about ideology far more than about economics. “If you’re of a socialist bent, this is going to be your thing,” he said. Indeed, liberals like Alarcon will spend thousands of dollars pursuing this age-old question through statewide public hearings (soaking the taxpayers to cover staff resources, travel expenses, and final report-writing) when they might better exercise some leadership and courage within their districts by putting out the message that poverty is caused more by poor individual choices than by societal conditions.

California voters may recall Governor Gray Davis over the mess the state has fallen into, but, in fairness, they ought to consider the role of the Legislature’s liberal-dominated Democrat majority in helping drive the Golden State into a dysfunctional state.

Dave Stirling served in the California Assembly between 1976 and 1982. He is Vice President of Pacific Legal Foundation. This article was written for and appeared in the July/August 2003 edition of California Political Review.

This is the full and complete version of the excellent article on California's out of control liberal government, which was severely edited down in order to fit into a tiny box in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle. (That op-ed piece became the basis of this thread.)

This is one of those articles that you had better save to a separate folder because it will probably never be found on the internet after today, just like the Washington Post article that was posted on Friday. The WP article was written before the blackout and said that the Senate Democrats planned to continue to obstruct the energy bill for environmental concessions because the public had lost interest in energy issues.

I still say that we have to deny the Democratic Socialists the right to use the term, "liberal". "Liberal" is too touch feely and suggests a free will, which is totally absent in socialism. Let's call them what they are, socialists/fascists/communists.

Sorry, I had been posting on another thread and got confused. You were asking for a link to the WP story on the energy bill. No, there is no link because the story was deleted and all that was posted on FreeRepublic was a link to the WP front page and the first few lines of the story. I am looking for a Freeper who has access to the hard copy of the Friday, Aug 15 times, Congress section.

My local library won't get the paper for at least a week and the newstands here don't carry it. I have called everywhere.

Thank God, some sanity.

With the blame focused on Gray Davis, the Democratic Party's leftist, anti-business bent is getting a pass. Unfortunately, there is no provision for recalling all the leftists in the legislature.

I don't believe any one person can avoid "Califorclosure" in the near future with the current legislature in place.

"Regrettably, the liberals who control the legislature have yet to acknowledge their spending addiction."

It is not an "addiction". It is competent, conscious, thought out decision made time after time after time with no regrets or concerns whatsoever.

Since 1995, when statewide private and public employer-paid workers’ comp premiums amounted to $5.7 billion, an escalation of fabricated employee injuries, medical service-provider overcharges, and ambulance-chasing attorney practices have driven statewide employer premiums to $15 billion today. Experts suggest that increases to $20 billion can be expected within the next six months. In a recent Assembly Insurance Committee hearing, where five major workers’ compensation reform measures were pending, even the state’s Democrat Insurance Commissioner testified to the workers’ compensation system’s imminent collapse if legislative reform was not quickly forthcoming...

Within the hour, the committee’s liberal majority killed all five of the measures that would have assisted the state’s public and private employers, as well as millions of their employees, to avoid the coming effects of this crisis.

All I can say is... those damn leftist, socialist, anti-business, anti free enterprize BASTARDS.

But why then single out the sale of sodas to ban (students who want a soda may continue to bring them on campus) while allowing other food items with far greater fat and sugar content to be served or sold on campus?

Dude, check the fat and sugar content of the SCHOOL LUNCH. You'll faint, and then you'll never, EVER let your kid eat cafeteria food ever again. It's like lard on a tray.

The liberals fail to grasp that the essence of government is providing for the needs of the general public, not the individual or individual class. Government provides police and fire service for everyone. It provides roads, water, sewer for all. It protects the general public health from epidemics, polluted drinking water, bioterrorism. It provides free public elementary schools.

Unless you are a ward of the Court, the government is not supposed to provide individuals with a gynecologist, a dentist, a psychiatrist, a job, a free college education, prescription drugs, free rent, groceries, etc. It is not supposed to provide any special income, age, race or other class with these services or subsidies for these services.

When the taxes taken from the general public flow to individual benefit, that is not a tax, it is a transference of wealth. As stated so nicely by Justice Roberts in U.S. v. Butler(1936):

"...A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the government. The word has never been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another..."

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Destructive Government:The Capitol’s Careening Ruling Class and the Wreckage It Is Leaving in Its Wake

Destructive Government:
The Capitol’s Careening Ruling Class and the Wreckage It Is Leaving in Its Wake