Free Republic

<p>Remember how angry you were when the Legislature failed to pass a budget on time last summer? Maybe you were angry, too, about the late budget the summer before that. How about in 2001 or 1998 or 1997 or 1996 or 1995 or any of the 22 times in the last 28 years that the Legislature missed its constitutional deadline for passing a state budget?</p>

One Republican who is a maverick on this subject is conservative Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, who received 13.5% of the vote for governor in the Gray Davis recall election and plans to run next year for lieutenant governor. McClintock has long thought that the budget should be passed by a simple majority vote. "A perverse result of the supermajority requirement is that it does not constrain state spending," McClintock says. "What it does is bid up the cost of the budget with each additional vote. Every additional vote comes with louder calls for higher spending.

Conflict-of-Interest Budgeting Get rid of the 2/3 supermajority and get ready for more taxes... [Ray Haynes] 2/3/04 SCENARIO 1 “Assemblyman Smith, vote for this budget, and our union will write you a check for $15,000. Not to your campaign – to you personally. Buy a new car, get your wife a Louis Vuitton purse, get braces for your kids—we don’t care. Just vote for this budget and the money is yours. I know you don’t like the new taxes and spending, but I can make it worth your while.” SCENARIO 2 “I don’t care if there are taxes in this...

<p>A coalition of political interest groups, led by public employee unions, is promoting a ballot measure that would, if enacted by voters, abolish the two-thirds vote for state budgets and the taxes to finance them, effectively eliminating the power of minority Republicans to affect state spending decisions.</p>

Prop 19 went down in smoke, but the world's fifth biggest economy passed three propositions that address its yearly budget crisis. One makes it better and two make it worse, according to Bond Buyer. First, California voters passed Prop 25 to allow the legislature to pass a state budget without a 2/3 supermajority. This was the main obstacle to passing a budget this year for over 100 days past due. Arkansas and Rhode Island are the only states that still require a supermajority to pass the budget, and Rhode Island is another fiscal disaster. Second, California voters passed Prop 26...

<p>Proposition 56 would make it a lot easier for the Legislature to pass a budget and raise taxes. They dare call it 'accountability.'</p> <p>Those Californians who agree with the Democratic premise that government should spend more dollars on every imaginable program, that efforts to balance the budget by slowing spending are heartless, and that taxes aren't nearly as high as they should be, have a chance to put their money where their mouths are on March 2.</p>

California state government's fiscal house is a mess. Blame the way the Legislature and governor craft the state budget partisan bickering; blown deadlines; parading pork; stalemates; and political extortion. It's not pretty watching California's spending plan come together every year. The process has resulted in smoke-and-mirror budget balancing schemes, costly decisions and taxpayer-funded "gifts" to special interests. At the heart of the flawed budget process is the "super-majority" passage requirement two-thirds of the Senate and Assembly must pass a state budget before it is sent to the governor. California, Rhode Island and Arkansas are the only states requiring two-thirds or...

<p>Title: "Tax Increases"</p> <p>Script: "State law says that before the Legislature can increase taxes, they need a two-thirds vote. That's a good thing. It means they can't increase taxes as often as they'd like.</p> <p>But Proposition 56 gets rid of that law. Fifty-six makes it much easier for them to increase taxes - property tax, sales tax, income, car, gas taxes. They want us to make it easier for them to increase our taxes.</p>

<p>It would be a shame, just as California was starting to take the right path to restore a semblance of fiscal sanity, if California voters were misled into supporting an initiative that took them backwards.</p> <p>We don't use the term "misled" lightly, believing the average voter to be perfectly capable of making informed judgments. But the campaign to promote Proposition 56 on the March 2 ballot, just like the initiative itself, is terribly dishonest.</p>

<p>The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce and two other lobbying groups are urging voters on March 2 to reject Proposition 56, a measure that would lower from two-thirds to 55 percent the percentage of votes required to pass a state budget or raise taxes.</p>