It's been just about two weeks since the Senate collapsed. Sad to say, that we might even be further away from a solution. Let's look at this mess in a bullet format and try and make sense of it all.
14 Senators are holding up the budget until a majority of their far right cohort agrees to the deal, even though we only need one more vote. Essentially they are requiring that 74% of the legislature approves of the final budget. The two-thirds budget requirement is arcane as it is, but to require near unanimous consent is just absurd.
It is now clear that the Republican calls to change CEQA (see yesterday's post) are central to their demands. That is absolutely a non-starter for the Democrats and the Governor. In the wake of the dustup over the CARB, Arnold is not exactly in a position to start weakening environmental laws without a huge backlash. I am not sure where the Republicans think they are going to get a lot of support for their pro-business, anti-green argument in both the Capitol and the public. California has a lot of Republicans, but a large percentage of them are environmentally friendly. The same cannot be said for the Republican Senators who are holding out. They are very much out of the mainstream, arguably even within their own party.
Senate Pro Tem Don Perata has declared that he will not take up any more legislation until the budget is passed, something Speaker Fabian Nunez quite rightly disagrees with. The Republicans would love it if the progressive legislation that the Democrats have on tap, like AB8 (health care reform) get scuttled. It would allow the Republicans to further undermine our system of government.
Arnold really looks impotent here. Nothing he has done has worked. His strategy of disengagement on the budget until the last minute has proven to be a bad one. He seriously miscalculated the intentions of his fellow Republicans. This stalemate has the ability to seriously undermine a lot of the work he has done in the last year to try and prove that he can unite both parties and pass landmark legislation. If this keeps up, it will damage his chances at the 2010 Senate race, if he was even thinking of running in the first place.
Nunez and Perata are now looking for any possible leverage points they can find on the hold-out Republicans. Nunez is declaring Republican legislative priorities DOA. Perata is stripping folks from committee assignments. Unfortunately, there is not much power they hold over them. Each day that passes is a victory for the ultra right-wing conservative Senators.
This week momentum has emerged to repeal the 2/3rds vote requirement for the budget's passage. Speaker Nunez has declared that it will be a major priority for him. Doing that in conjunction with a re-examination of our tax system would make sense, however that tact did not work in 2004. Logically, it does make sense to address our revenue problems, as part of a larger budget discussion. Today Mark Leno has an op-ed in the Chronicle worth reading about reforming the budget process and historical look at the 2/3rds requirement.
The idea that a single legislator of the minority party can cause such suffering to millions of Californians is appalling. Maybe if the deadlock continues for another month or two, recognizing the risk that would present thousands of social-service providers, voters will more quickly understand that it is time to change the way we do business and enter the 21st century.
Obviously, the attempt in 2004 to address this very rule did not go well. The Republicans managed to scare the public about the potential for increased taxes. Nunez and Leno seem to be arguing for a ballot initiative to change it to a simple majority vote for the budget. That would fix the short term problems of the mechanisms for passing the budget, but looking at the tax vote requirement and Prop. 13 would address the supply problem. These are very thorny issues to say the least.
Right now there is not a clear or heck even a murky path to a resolution on the budget. Who knows when that will change or what will cause it to happen.
