Cavala: What Will California’s Budget Deadlock Bring?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

At every point where there is a severe shortfall between needed revenues and something close to current revenues, a budget deadlock ensues with the following characteristics.

Democratic legislators and their interest group allies seek to pressure Republican lawmakers into providing the votes necessary for more taxes. This is a difficult task given that Republicans define themselves as a party as the “no tax” group. To overcome this fact, interest groups spend significant money trying to effect public opinion so that it will, in turn, effect Republican attitudes.

So efforts are made to mobilize the constituencies supportive of state spending in Republican seats. Teachers in Republican districts;. Consumers of IHSS; Local public safety organizations, and so on. These district elites, once mobilized, should constitute a counter pressure to the ideological anti-tax group, ultimately making it easier to raise taxes than to cut spending further.

These district efforts to organize and mobilize take time – hence the relative inactivity in Sacramento. Democrats stall until the pressure builds.

Republicans, too, favor delay. The Democratic National Convention takes place in July, and many Democratic lawmakers would like to attend. By stalling until then, Republicans can put pressure on the new Democratic leaders to compromise further so their people can be present at the Obama coronation. Somewhat later, the state’s cash flow problems will instigate a spate of bad press stories as we are forced to rely on high priced Revenue Anticipation Warrants – bad press that will focus on leadership failures.

The difficulty with both strategies is that neither is likely to succeed.

Republican lawmakers that break ranks to support tax increases – maybe to get goodies for their districts – know that they will face the fate of the five Republicans enticed into that situation by Speaker Hertzberg. All of them were wiped out in subsequent efforts to prolong their political careers. ALL of them. Holding up the budget has never proved to be a Republican negative: witness Jeff Denham.

But Democratic lawmakers are equally unlikely to break with time. The interest groups they would have to sell out aren’t just ‘contributors’, they define the very reason for public office for a majority of the Democrats. In a recent primary election just outside of Sacramento the police, firefighters, teachers and public sector unions all rolled the store on behalf of a liberal woman who defeated a more pragmatic mayor. The cuts the GOP are demanding are so unthinkable to her as to be beyond the pale.