Placing the Blame

As I write this (7:54 A.M.), the CA State Legislature is debating, and voting on, the new budget. In fact, the State Senate has already voted to approve it. There's plenty of teeth gnashing and foot stomping going on, but it looks like there's no one in the Capitol Building who is willing to be the one who scuttles the deal.

County and municipal leaders continue threatening lawsuits over the plan to raid, er, borrow funds from their coffers. Take it up in 2010, if you care so much. One of the problems with CA's government is that, for many years, people paid as much attention to what was going on in Sacramento as Montanans pay attention to what's going on in Billings (or wherever). Well, CA is too big to ignore, and that ignorance allowed a lot of people to engage in an epic bout of feather-bedding and rent seeking. Hopefully, the fault lines exposed by the budget crisis will still be raw in Nov. 2010, which seems a long way away right now.

The grim search for who to "blame" for the deep spending cuts has already pointed to one oppressed & despised minority. I present to you, the SF Chronicle's take on who is responsible for CA's budget problems:

The Republicans remain united against any new taxes - and it would take at least a few of their votes to reach the required two-thirds threshold. It seems that many of them would sooner see their children in second-rate schools and their cars on Third World roads before they would break their anti-tax pledges and put themselves at the mercy of the right-wing talk radio blowhards.

It's a sad commentary on the state of governance in California, but it is a reality the Capitol's voices of responsibility must confront.

The "voices of responsibility" in the Capitol wanted to solve the budget crisis by raising taxes, piling on more debt, and making cuts to the state programs (education, prisons, first responders) that people actually want the government to deliver. This wasn't opposed by Republicans afraid of "talk radio blowhards." (You cannot discuss the GOP without bringing up "talk radio." Why, you could almost say that Rush Limbaugh was an indirect cause of the budget crisis!). This was voted on and rejected by large majorities of voters in the special election 2 months ago. Surely, you remember that!

The budget crisis was not driven by mean ol' Republicans who are eager to drive their cars on "Third World roads" (hey, who wouldn't? It's a thrill!). It was a crisis of Big Government that finally grew too big from the sort of initiatives that liberals favor - high pay & pensions for unionized public sector employees, generous state services for illegal immigrants, white elephants like high speed rail, a hostile legal and regulatory environment for business - such that its tax base could no longer fund its operations. CA has gone beyond its core competence as a state and pursued all manner of policies - especially in the environmental area - that are properly left to the national government. CA liberals and the occasional moderate Republican have been the drivers of this effort and now they find themselves in the position that was easy to predict: insolvency. And it's all the Republicans' fault?!

Well, sorry, it's not. Politically speaking, it's not the GOP's job to help solve a crisis of Big Government that they did not create, and largely opposed every step of the way. If a high tax, high regulatory environment, with unsustainable public pensions is what is best for CA, then let's hear the liberals complaining about the intransigent GOP justify their proposed policies. But, they can't and won't. It's much easier to blame talk radio blowhards.

2010 can't come soon enough.