Schrag: The Knights Who Say “No” in California

By Peter Schrag

Last week, the state Chamber of Commerce sent another unsurprising "don't" letter to the governor and Legislature: Don't raise taxes on oil extraction; don't increase taxes on the sale of wine and beer; don't impose sales taxes on services and entertainment. Don't, don't, don't.

But there wasn't a word about how California could get itself out of its $28 billion budget hole, or whatever it has by now grown to.

The same lack of helpfulness is true of the California Business Roundtable, which like the chamber, supported the governor's failed attempt in September to secure a temporary sales tax increase but hasn't provided any hint of a solution since or done anything to nudge its Republican friends in the Legislature toward something more flexible than "no." Ditto for CBEE, California Business for Education Excellence, which has always been quick to demand tougher standards but which has been silent as existing standards are jeopardized by multibillion-dollar cuts to education budgets.

The three leaders of the business groups, CBEE President Jim Lanich, Roundtable President Bill Hauck, and Chamber President Allan Zaremberg, are talking about some engagement with the budget crisis in the coming weeks, although only Zaremberg was definite that a "more fleshed out proposal" would come.

Nobody in Sacramento expects much movement on the fiscal crisis until next month, when newly elected legislators arrive in Sacramento. There'll be two or maybe three more Democrats in the Assembly, still short of the two-thirds vote needed to enact a budget without Republican votes.

And while a couple of Republican senators showed some signs of flexibility, Democrats in that house won't have a two-thirds margin either.

Hauck complains that the education community, the teachers unions particularly, haven't shown any flexibility either, lobbying to protect school funding and, like the Legislature's Republicans, not budging on their demands. But the Democrats have been willing to swallow spending cuts, including cuts in education, if the Republicans gave them cover by compromising on the revenue increases that are essential to any solution. All that's as unfortunate for the GOP as it is for California generally. It further marginalizes an ever more estranged party whose membership is slipping and whose connection with young voters and the state's growing minorities – Latinos particularly – is ever more distant.

More and more, it's a party of aging white men clinging to a rapidly fading past. As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last year, Republicans "are not filling the seats" – nor, as even Republicans noticed earlier this month, are they packing them in at polls.

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