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Schrag: Schwarzenegger Pay Cut Budget Trick is Latest in 5 Years of Missed Leadership

By Peter Schrag

Arnold Schwarzenegger's professed intention to reduce the pay of 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage until there's a new budget doesn't quite fall into the "stop me before I kill again" class, but it comes close.

It's not a strategy, either fiscal or political, but more like a cry of desperation. If they find the suicide's corpse on the floor, they'll say he really didn't mean to do himself in, he was just pleading for help.

Or, if you want to get Shakespearean, it's the now-beaten, once-cocky monarch at Bosworth Field begging to trade "my kingdom for a horse."

You may not wish it on anybody, especially in this case, when most of the damage will be done not to the ruler but to his subjects, meaning us. Still, after nearly five years combining noble ambitions with posturing, clichés and gimmickry, sympathy and compassion come hard.

Of course the state's fiscal mess isn't all his fault. He's inherited a lot of spending requirements the voters have locked into the constitution. He's the nominal leader of a party that won't be led in a system that, because of the state's undemocratic, gridlock-inducing two-thirds majority requirement to enact budgets, gives this insular minority a veto.

But he's been a major contributor to that mess, beginning with his costly (now $6 billion a year) reduction of the vehicle license fee, which Californians had calmly, if not happily, paid for decades until the mischievous Tom McClintock, seeing the traction the issue got in Virginia, turned it into the evil "car tax." Schwarzenegger, who's long complained about auto-pilot spending, himself contributed to it with his sponsorship and/or support of a set of ballot measures that will suck billions more out of the treasury.

But the more fundamental problem, despite the good marks he deserves for his environmental programs and his laudable, albeit naive, universal health care proposal, has been five years of mis-leadership.

It's a long list: the constant reiteration of the argument that the state has a spending problem, not a revenue problem; the pursuit of chimerical budget reforms, many of them yet more auto-pilot programs; the proposed pawning of the state lottery; the broken agreements with major state interest groups; the attempts to intimidate opponents, alternating with invitations to sweet reason; the nearly unending staging of gubernatorial performance art.

The message in this long string of messages has been no message. From the start, Schwarzenegger knew (or at least said he knew) that the state's governmental and fiscal systems were unmanageable, but instead of using his unquestioned popularity to force both the political system and the state's voters to face that, he resorted to those gimmicks.

The state, quite obviously, has both a revenue and a spending problem; if it wants good schools, roads, universities, parks, more of the former than the latter. After 30 years of finagling its finances and spoiling the electorate with the myth that it could all be done on the cheap, delivering a message based on reality, some of it technical and complicated, wouldn't have been easy.

Nor was the problem only California's. For most of two generations, the whole nation lived on the large investments – in infrastructure, education, capital goods – of the postwar era and for the past two decades in an unreal world of cheap imported energy, environmental indifference and the illusion that America would dominate the world for ever and ever.

Schwarzenegger seems to understand the environmental/energy issues and occasionally has focused on California's own infrastructure problems. But for all his Terminator persona, he's been timid about risking much in waking up voters who know the state is heading the wrong way but don't yet understand that it's often their own habits taking it there.

The proposed state employee pay cut and the accompanying layoffs – whether as a bluff or for real – was directed at the wrong targets. The real targets, again as bluff or for real, have to be the voters themselves, put in such a way that there begins to be an understanding that if Californians still want a great state, they have to pay for it.

The governor's gesture last week seems most of all a wish that somebody, presumably the Democrats and maybe state workers, will come forward to provide cover for a retreat from his rhetoric of the past five years. He seems to have given up his attempts to echo fanatic tax cutters like Grover Norquist and his "starve the beast" mantra. But he has not yet found the courage to apply the lofty ambitions of his environmental programs to California's financial mess.

By now the governor must know that more tricks will not solve long-range problems, much less make a legacy. He's tried to go over the heads of the Democrats with his ballot measures. Maybe he should try for a long-term view and go over the heads of the Republicans. They'll never be his friends anyway.

Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article is published with his permission.

Posted on July 31, 2008

Comments

Thanks for providing some perspective -- something rarely found in responses to the current budget "crisis" (and no, they don't get to just keep repeating that it's "a spending problem, not a revenue problem" without providing evidence! Or at least, they shouldn't).

Let's not forget Frank's excellent post on the excellent Sac Bee article describing what's going on behind closed doors while we're all distracted by the minimum-wage theatrics:

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/07/a_republican_pl.html

By perpetually blocking revenue increases, and inflating deficit estimates, the GOP actually creates these repetitive "crises" and then uses the 2/3 rule to extract hideous concessions that they could never obtain by legitimate means. Are these tactics tantamount to hostage-taking? Hijacking? I think so. They're a permanent minority in CA, yet they get to hold the whole state hostage to outrageous demands every year. Anyone who's upset about the crisis should thank the Republican caucus. I think the 2/3 rule has to go.

Posted by: logos at July 31, 2008 10:31 AM

logos, et al,

Rather than look at the minority Republicans as "irritants" as the "permanent minority", you need to recognize that they were VOTED INTO OFFICE by their constituents to represent them and not a "republican caucus.

(Is their a Republican Caucus? I know there are Black, Latino and LGBT ones...)

They didn't just "show up" in Sacramento, they were VOTED INTO THOSE SEATS.

The democratic party inability to sway the voters in those republican districts should be your beef if you were to think about it more than just a second or two.

Mr. Shrag,

Outside of Arnold's dismal performance as Governor, don't you think LEADERSHIP should have been also be forthcoming from Democratic Leaders holding legislative comittee chair positions? How about being Senate Pro Tem (aka Perata) and Assembly Speaker (Nunez) all those years too?

Why do democrats/liberals ONLY pick on the other parties? Isn't there any introspection going on there? Check out a mirror: it illuminates as well as reflects...

Posted by: Jay Gould at July 31, 2008 01:30 PM

I, for one, have always been willing to pay a bit more for something better than what we had before. As such a person, I find posturing and immature games (read "rattling cages") very distasteful.

However, apparently it must work for the Gov, since he does it so often. Then as soon as people begin to react, he chuckles, "I was only kidding. Or... was I?" Wish he'd grow up.

Posted by: Ccullens at July 31, 2008 04:22 PM

Jay, while we all have the right to an opinion, I think you are confused about one thing -- the Republicans are in fact the minority party in the Legislature because Californians in significantly more districts choose to vote Democrats into office than Republicans. Republican voter registration is also in the minority statewide, and these are long-term trends. Yes, it would be better in my opinion if there were no districts that voted Republican and sent those folks to Sacramento, given the way they've performed; however, the way legislatures are supposed to work is that the majority party gets to set the agenda. That's fair because the voters gave them that majority.

The voters of CA have NOT agreed to give the GOP control of the legislature, yet in effect, at budget time, they have it -- not because it's the will of the people of the state, but because the 2/3 rule allows the minority to obstruct the process and exercise tons more power than our democratic structures are supposed to give them, as the minority party.

That's why people have been known to say that the 2/3 rule is anti-democracy, because it disrespects the will of the voters, who send up a majority of Democrats to serve. And that's why I'm saying it has to go. All it accomplishes is gridlock and the enabling of a tyrannical minority. That's my beef!

Posted by: logos at July 31, 2008 09:54 PM

You are nuts. If the democrats would act in a reasonable manner to get a budget completed and to address the 14 billion short fall the governor would not have to use this ruse to get their attention. The democratic bureaucrats do not want to be the ones who decide what programs are cut. Many of us see the weakness in our legislature and can not believe that they are not voted out of office for their ineptness. Voters have lousy choices I guess. We all can see that there is a short fall of money to fund the full budget. Some programs are going to suffer. We can not spend more than we have? The legislature should man up and make that decision.

Pat L

Posted by: pat l at July 31, 2008 10:27 PM

logos,

I KNOW democrats are a majority in the state and also in the Legislature...

But that majority is offset by voter placed members of the opposition party. The "leadership" from the democrats (Perata/Nunez/committe chairs) did NOT SET AN AGENDA to fix this budget well before the deadline. It didn't happen and now its "the republicans fault" for not doing what the majority party wants!

By your logic, when the republicans controlled Congress, theroetically they could have placed more folks in GITMO, drilled in ANWAR, built more powerplants, perfomed even more eavesdropping, etc., etc., ...

...and the democrats as the minority party would just have to suck it up quietly.

Give me a break!

WORK with your opposition. The answer is somewhere in the middle (and it should be biased towards the majority, I admit that). The majority party can afford a slight move to the middle can it not? If asked, the minority would compromise if SOME CUTS and SMALLER TAX INCREASES were agreed upon...couldn't it?

Posted by: Jay Gould at August 1, 2008 09:11 AM

I don't know why Californians vote for republicans in the first place. Haven't we gotten tired of the same old thing everytime that a republican is voted into the house or senate? What the governor should do is give the state employees their full pay and try to hold overnight sessions to get the budget passed. Everyday that the budget is not passed it is causing hardship on the very people who rely on the State monies to live. It is as if there is no compassion in Sacramento. I say get rid of all the "old boys" in the senate and house and elect all new legislators in Sacramento (democrats and republicans) and then maybe we can get a budget that is passed on time. The same old, same old, is not working any more and I believe Californians are getting fed up. It is apparent that the people we have there now are incompetent. I say get rid of them all!

Posted by: K. Townsend at August 6, 2008 09:37 AM

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