Dan Walters: Schwarzenegger shares blame on chronic deficits
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published Friday, Jul. 03, 2009
Remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger who, exactly five years ago, denounced state legislators as "girlie men" beholden to unions because they failed to pass a state budget? He's back, sensing that time is running out on his 2003 campaign promise to stop "crazy deficit spending."
"I was sent to Sacramento to fix the broken system," Schwarzenegger said Thursday, demanding that the Legislature close a budget deficit without new taxes.
The Republican governor accused lawmakers – implicitly the Legislature's dominant Democrats – of ignoring "waste, fraud and abuse," adding a phrase reminiscent of his famous "girlie man" epithet: "They're just beholden to the unions and the special interests."
Schwarzenegger's renewed campaign shifted into high gear this week after the Legislature once again stalemated over how to bridge the yawning budget gap.
"The legislators' failure to act on those proposals sent a message to the California voters and to the taxpayers that says we want you to make the sacrifices but we in Sacramento don't want to make any sacrifices whatsoever," Schwarzenegger said Wednesday as a new fiscal year began. "Protecting the special interests who benefit from our dysfunctional system was more important to the Legislature than protecting the taxpayers and dealing with the entire $24 billion deficit."
The governor and his advisers have evidently concluded that the huge deficit – now pegged at $26.3 billion – and the issuance of state IOUs to some creditors may provide impetus for deep-seated budget changes not only to close the current shortfall but also to mitigate future deficits.
It's classic wedge politics, attacking a Legislature whose public esteem stands at a historic low level and drawing a contrast between the economic hardships afflicting ordinary Californians and public employees whose unions are closely allied with Democratic lawmakers.
Pointedly, one of Schwarzenegger's "reforms" would roll back for future employees the juicy pension benefits that the Legislature and his predecessor, Gray Davis, enacted in 1999 at the behest of those unions. Another would affect the In-Home Supportive Services program that now has 300,000 unionized workers due to changes in the law also made during the Davis regime.
If Schwarzenegger's new old crusade is, to quote Yogi Berra, "déjà vu all over again," one should also remember that he deserves much of the onus for failing to close the state's chronic deficits. Repeatedly, especially during his first months in office and later when running for re-election, he took the easy way out – cutting taxes by billions of dollars, backing off a tough spending limit, unilaterally adding spending to placate Democrats and blowing through a one-time surge in revenues.
It's commendable that Schwarzenegger is now willing to make tough decisions to fix California's fiscal mess – if, indeed, he is – but he could have done it much sooner and avoided much of the current angst.
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