Peter Schrag and the Budget

Peter Schrag, the veteran 1960s columnist of the Sacramento Bee, wrote a column this morning which argued that the GOP in the legislature as "a hard-line group of self-insulated ideologues", even for Schrag that is a bit over the top. He argues that the GOP budget plan, which ignores revenues and demands a series of policy changes outside of his rather narrow view of the world, is absurd.

The GOP plan announced yesterday had a lot to be desired. Ultimately the state budget will need some revenues. One could make both the policy case and the political one that the substantial reductions seem to concentrate on things many in the GOP caucus do not value.

But if the GOP is guilty of narrow vision, so is Schrag. Schrag points a finger at the GOP when both parties deserve a good deal of credit for the mess we are in. Neither has an idea about the middle. The GOP has been a bit more aggressive in dumping out people but independents are ultimately growing at the expense of both parties. Schrag lays a lot of the problems in the budget on the 2/3 vote requirement. One could make a much stronger point that the open primary, which most democrats would reject categorically, could improve decision processes a lot more than changing the voting fraction on the budget. One need only to have listened to several of the new members of the Assembly who are democrats to understand how narrow both parties are.

Second, Schrag does not seem to consider the long term risks of current policies in smoothing out the budget waves we have seen in the last several years. Almost any observer would concede that the state needs more revenues to solve this problem. But the state's economy has been burdened over the last couple of decades with absurd regulations. Those have dampened a once vigorous economy and have chased employers out of California. At the beginning of the Davis administration there was a quick enactment of a proposal to limit employee flexibility on work rules. This generation of workers would benefit from being able to vary work rules. But the democrats enacted an absurdly rigid set of rules on California employers. The same could be said for our tax system - we have among the highest rates for income and sales taxes.

So the GOP proposal is half baked and most independent observers would argue that part of the long term solution for our current budget issues will be changes in policies that Schrag ignores. Some of the proposals that the GOP came up with on policy could help us re-establish our rate of economic growth - in the intermediate term that will help the state capture more revenue.