The budget game

Written by Mountain Democrat
Thursday, 12 August 2010

Assemblyman Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, announced Wednesday he is running to fill the unfinished term of the late Sen. Dave Cox. It’s too early at this point for us to choose a candidate to endorse. But we sure do endorse Assemblyman Gaines’ No. 1 and No. 2 campaign platform planks: No tax increases and absolutely no tax increases.

The only way this state is going to close the budget gap is to stop spending, stop spending.

Unfortunately that is not the plan of the Democrat majority in the Legislature. One theory coming out of the Capitol dome is that nothing will happen on the budget until after the Nov. 2 election. The Democrats may be waiting for Proposition 25 to pass, which would eliminate the two-thirds requirement to pass a budget. Prop. 25 would change that to a simple majority, which means the Democrats wouldn’t have to compromise with the Republican minority or the Republican governor. Prop. 25 is a shortsighted attack on one of the key benefits of 1978’s Proposition 13. The Democrats haven’t always been in the majority. If their majority should slip away, which it did for about a year in 1994, they will appreciate how the two-thirds budget vote requirement produces a more bipartisan budget.

We only have to look to what President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress have done by ramming through their huge expansion of federal control over our lives, tax hikes and trillions in debt without bothering with bipartisanship. The results are causing widespread revulsion in the electorate, plunging Congress’ approval numbers to 21 percent and Obama’s handling of the economy to 44 percent in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday. Everything Congress has done since Obama was elected was everything the liberal majority wanted and they kicked away the Republicans like a dog begging at the dinner table. The Democrats got what they wanted and the electorate is growing disgruntled. Only 15 percent of the people polled by the Real Clear Politics Poll like the health care bill. Forty-five percent say it goes too far. The more people find out about the 2,000-page bill that not even most representatives and senators - nor the president - read, the more they dislike it.

The spontaneous formation of Tea Party groups across the country is a direct consequence of the Democratic leadership in Congress pandering only to the far left and belittling and insulting huge swaths of middle America. The political center is riled up and in a rebellious mood.

Maybe the California Legislature is counting on voter disgust with its budget inaction to attract a majority vote for Prop. 25. We would like to think California voters will see through the charade. Gaines said Wednesday he had seen surveys that showed California taxpayers would accept fewer state services in return for lower taxes. Other than the DMV, elections, tax collections, the Highway Patrol, education and some sort of minimal safety net, government services after these have a diminishing value in relation to their cost and regulatory overreach. California is providing 32 percent of the welfare benefits nationally, Gaines said.

And yet the Democratic majority in the state Legislature is still talking about raising income taxes, claiming the middle class and so-called wealthy can deduct state income taxes on their federal income taxes. But an analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office concludes it would most hurt those making between $20,000 and $200,000. The percentage of those who can deduct state income taxes on their federal income taxes is minimal because of the Alternative Minimum Tax. Most middle class taxpayers have to have a crushing mortgage and humongous near-death medical expenses to qualify to itemize. Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Sacramento, wrote in his newsletter Wednesday that 62 percent of state taxpayers don’t itemize their tax returns. Last year the Legislature enacted the largest tax increase anywhere in the U.S., Gaines said. We don’t need more taxes. We need a lot less. And we need a lot less budget baloney.