Impending Cave on the Budget?

by dday [courtesy of Calitics: Soapblox California - Front Page]

I really want to not believe this, no matter what kind of sense it makes.

But despite initial rhetoric, political analysts believe California will avoid a long budget dispute because lawmakers have a one-time incentive this year to negotiate in a timely fashion: job longevity.

Lawmakers want voters to pass an initiative in February to change the state's term limits law so members may serve up to 12 years in any one house. One proposal would ensure that Assembly Speaker Fabian N??ez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata can remain beyond 2008 even though current law would force them out of office next year.

To build support for the initiative, lawmakers will need to appear productive this year, and the budget is the Capitol's most symbolic gauge of productivity, said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento.

"All policy initiatives are impacted by the budget, so it has become a single, deceivingly simple symbol of the ability for state government to work," Hodson said. "Frankly, the political players and the news media have reinforced this notion of the budget being no more complicated than the arithmetic it takes to balance a checkbook. So if the Legislature and governor can't, the public thinks they're obviously inept or corrupt."

The problem is that the leaders in the Legislature would be bashed SO MUCH if they gave in on, say, slashing funding for the poor or the elderly, that they would lose as much support as they would gain.  There's a fine line between "working together" and "giving the Governor every cruel thing he wants."  How could  progressive groups be eager to pass a term limits bill for the benefit of those who would sell out our poor or our elderly?  Budgets in California take time, and it's up to the Legislature to explain why, should there be an impasse.  "Arnold is trying to build a budget on the backs of the poor and our children, etc."

over...
Still, this is not encouraging:

Perata, D-Oakland, and N??ez, D-Los Angeles, came out swinging last Monday. The two leaders sat quietly in the front row of Schwarzenegger's presentation at the Secretary of State Building. N??ez then told reporters that "you've got the aged, blind, disabled and poor that are having to be the ones to take it in the shorts again."

Republican leaders held court nearby to complain that Schwarzenegger had failed to reduce spending and that they would be demanding as much as $4 billion in additional cuts. Yet Perata briefly acknowledged that the initial back-and-forth was "part of the Kabuki," a form of traditional Japanese theater and a term Schwarzenegger has used to describe early negotiations.

"I think these particular players have worked together long enough to know the subtext, and certainly Democrats are going to stand up and fight for those who need government services the most," said Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist. "I think it's a serious criticism of the governor's budget proposal that should be taken at face value. But having worked together for a while, they all understand there's a side conversation either going on now or that will go on that will lead to a deal being cut."

I certainly hope that such a deal doesn't keep any of those draconian cuts intact.  "Productivity" should not sacrifice principle.  Especially in service to nothing more than an initiative which keeps the major players in power longer.