Read Their Lips, No New Taxes... or, How California Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spending Cuts

As the Legislature comes back into session to consider Governor Schwarzenegger's final budget proposal, the Sacramento News & Review (Sactown's free weekly) has an excellent piece on how the Taliban wing of the California Republican Party has helped drive the Golden State into a ditch. It's well worth a read, even if you're not a political insider or junkie like I am.

So what's the solution? I don't really know. The new redistricting system we're going to be using for elections beginning in 2012 may help, but it's no panacea; California is a politically divided state, with liberal Democrats tending to dominate the North Coast, Bay Area, and urban Los Angeles, and conservative Republicans cleaning up in Orange County, the Inland Empire, and much of the Central Valley. Changing the shape of a rabid antitax Assemblymember's district from, say, Irvine isn't going to make that legislator more likely to negotiate or compromise on budget issues; nor is putting the drawing of a Marin County senatorial district in the hands of a "nonpartisan" commission going to make that county's representatives see eye-to-eye with businesspeople who may legitimately be burdened by government regulations.

On the other hand, the Open Primary Initiative (officially known by the goofy-sounding name "The Top Two Primaries Act") which will appear on this June's statewide ballot may actually produce some more thoughtful, compromise-oriented legislators in both parties. (Assuming it passes, that is; an exactly identical measure pushed by the Governor in 2004 lost by eight points. Oh, and that's back when Arnie's approval rating was 61 percent. Let's see how many votes his endorsement can get a measure in 2010.)

Until then, there's not much to do except wait and watch the tragicomic opera that is our state political process play out. The Democrats will balk at the Governor's proposed spending cuts, and try to offset them with some mild tax and fee increases, like a severance fee on oil extraction; Republicans will dig in their heels and cry foul that California is the most overtaxed, over-regulated political entity in the history of the universe, perhaps (but not necessarily) including the Soviet Union and Mao's China.

Meanwhile, real people are hurting; according to Alicia Trost, who works for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, the Governor's budget proposal would cut the average state welfare grant for a family of three in a high-cost county to $585. Twenty years ago it was $694, not adjusted for inflation. Run those numbers through an inflation calculator and California's poorest, most vulnerable families (and their children, who have no say in their parents' financial condition, keep in mind) would be getting less than half of what they got to live on in 1989. Would that every Republican state legislator had to live on $585 per month before they voted on cuts that will literally take food out of the mouths of poor children.