No lawmaker, Democrat or Republican, can possibly relish the task of closing another multibillion-dollar, mid-year budget shortfall.
But they have no choice. Too many of them are acting as if they do.
Several lawmakers seem heartened that California’s tax receipts ran $1.3 billion more than expected in January.
But with the state’s unemployment rate still above 12 percent, legislators are deluding themselves if they believe that tax dollars are going rain down on Sacramento come April 15.
California remains in a terrible recession and budget crisis. With some notable exceptions, lawmakers don’t seem to be facing the reality that they must pare $6 billion from the current year’s budget, and start solving the deficit looming for the fiscal year starting on July 1.
Republicans and some Democrats refuse to consider any taxes, including enforcing existing laws by increasing collections. Democrats refuse to make significant cuts, particularly in social services and health care for the poor.
After years of bad budgets, Democrats figure they have cut all they can. They have zero incentive to cut more deeply this early in the process, when Republicans, the minority in the state, seem unwilling to consider even modest tweaks to the tax code.
Either house has yet to make a real or significant spending reduction.
Bills to carve out more than $1 billion from prison spending might make sense. But cuts that deep would require the state to release prisoners. Lawmakers have shown themselves to be unwilling to take such a step, even balking at turning out medically infirm prisoners.
Legislators are distracted. Many are campaigning for higher office. Four aspire to become attorney general. It’s highly unlikely that any of them would agree to any cuts in prison spending, lest they be tarred as soft on crime.
Legislators are willing to approve legislation that would delay payment of some bills, amounting to about $1 billion. That will ensure that the state has enough cash to operate without issuing IOUs. But such gimmickry is the very definition of stopgap.
All this said, senators are to be commended for holding public hearings and taking public testimony on the budget mess. The Senate Budget Committee has held 10 hearings and spent long hours picking over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals. The full Senate approved interim measures last week and will vote on more Monday.
The Assembly’s full budget committee has not met, leaving matters to budget subcommittees. On Monday, the Assembly will follow the Senate’s lead by making an initial round of budget votes.
But Democrats and Republicans have not reached accords, and Schwarzenegger is unlikely to approve key parts of the Democrats’ plan.
The Assembly remains undisciplined. At the very time the Senate was voting on its first batch of budget bills last Thursday, Assembly Democrats, including Speaker Karen Bass and incoming Speaker John A. Pérez, massed on the Capitol steps to denounce an offensive and racist stunt by students at the University of California, San Diego.
When college students do dumb things, university administrators need to deal with it.
If administrators fail to act, then perhaps lawmakers should step in.
But for now and for the foreseeable future, the Legislature cannot be diverted. It needs to focus on the budget. Every day that lawmakers delay is a day that California goes deeper into the red.