1. First, he thinks the power of the Legislature would be curtailed if it switched over to a part-time model like that of Texas, whose Legislature meets once every two years. Not gonna happen. CA has a tradition of activist, progressive government that dates back to its founding. The problem with our Legislature is not the number of times it meets. It's what it does when it does meet: pass expensive, poorly thought out legislation.
2. He proposes a "Tax Payer Bill of Rights." I hate gimmicky sounding things like this because they make taxpayers into just another interest group of government seeking special favors. Taxpayers are the backbone of government, and the productive members of California society. CA's constitution and budget process is already weighed down by excessive "Bill of Rights"-style mandates, many of which were passed as anti-tax measures. We don't need more of the same.
3. Two-year budgeting. Good in theory, but how does this help? This creates no vehicle for lowering spending. You know what would be a real change? Budgets with aggressive sunset provisions, so the inevitable boondoggles don't have time to draw a die-hard constituency.
4. End budget stalemates by automatically adopting the governor's budget if the legislature fails to meet its deadline to pass its budget. Ridiculous. Has this worked anywhere? What would keep a future governor from filling his budget with poison pills that would raise the hackles of the opposition?
5. Spending controls limiting growth to 3% a year. Again, sounds good, but if there's one thing we have learned in the last 25 years, it's that there are all sorts of cute ways to take things "off-budget" long enough to bypass any controls. The only "spending controls" we should need ought to be those inside the heads of the legislators who should always, whether Democrat or Republican, wonder how they are going to pay for their latest projects.
6. Refund budget surpluses. See objection to #5.
7. Nunes also thinks we need to get back to the ideal of part-time, citizen legislators. This is one of the worst ideas (along with the line item veto and the flag burning amendment) in the list of GOP evergreens. CA is, despite everything, a huge & wealthy state. If left to fend for itself on the world stage, CA would stand as an equal with France and Germany. It is too big for amateurs to take the helm. CA's GOP delegation is already made up of "citizen legislators," and you know what? They get outclassed and outfought by the highly motivated activists, lobbyists, and big spenders on the other side of the aisle who recognize that no one pays attention to what is happening in Sacramento until it is too late. It might not seem like it, but the State Senate and State Assembly wield immense power. We need better professionals in those seats, not "common folk." And those professionals should be able to push back hard against the parasites who go to Sacramento to feed.
8. Lastly, Nunes wants to rely on the last refuge of the frustrated politico: the initiative process. The only initiative I would support would be one that dramatically raised the bar for entry on future initiatives. These are the playthings of activists who use use every emotional and linguistic trick in the book to pass "sounds too good to be true" initiatives that add to the budget without any sense of how that is affecting the overall budget picture.
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