ALPERN AT LARGE - After a weekend of camping at the beautiful and wonderful San Clemente State Park with my family, I came home to blaring headlines of how—despite recent cuts—California’s deficit is $16 billion, not $9 billion and that Governor Brown will still forge ahead with his plan for a statewide tax hike.
(And inasmuch as this piece addresses California’s fiscal ills, it’s also a call to arms about our national fiscal ills—because, after all, the only reason California HAS to balance its budget is that it can’t print its own money like Washington can.)
Both praise and scorn are due our Governor, who has succeeded in making long-overdue cuts to our state budget after years of gimmickry and political cowardice by his so-called “tough guy” predecessor, Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He deserves praise for demanding budget cuts by a Legislature that is so far left-leaning that they’ve not only been resistant to Republican Schwarzenegger but even to our current Democratic Governor.
However, despite the props Governor Brown has earned for being a grown-up, in contrast to the petulant teenagers that dominate the Sacramento Legislature, he also deserves critique for not being courageous enough to both demand more from public sector unions and from the general electorate … because the political will for a tax hike won’t fly until the pain and sacrifice is truly balanced for everyone.
Call them liberals, call them conservatives, call them pragmatists, but call them able to balance a budget when honest individuals recognize that we need ALL THREE critical pieces of a comprehensive plan to truly effectuate budgetary repair: pension/budget reform, cuts to entitlements, and a tax hike that demands sacrifice from everyone.
(And, again, inasmuch as this piece focuses on California, the case could easily be made at the federal level as well.)
Governor Brown might be a political pragmatist, but it’s not hard to conclude that he bowed to the state’s public sector unions and the out-of-touch left (and there ARE plenty who lean left but AREN’T out of touch) when he both failed to achieve true public sector pension/budget reform, and when he dropped his original plan to raise the state sales tax by one-half, and not just one-quarter, of a percent to make sure that EVERYONE pays more into the system.
The result? Governor Brown is now pushing for a tax hike that lopsidedly leans on upper-income Californians, who are either leaving the state in droves, or who are staying but carrying the weight for too many others as it is. This is not to say that those making over $250,000 are unwilling to shell out more taxes, but it’s not as if they’re living the easy life if they’ve got children and a California-level mortgage to pay down…and NO ONE believes that ANY new taxes will be spent well.
That last thought bears repeating: NO … ONE … BELIEVES … THAT … ANY … NEW … TAXES … WILL… BE … SPENT … WELL!
Californians (and Americans, in general) are already generous. Whether it’s a new publicly-funded baseball field for Compton High School or a private donation from the chairman of Oracle for energy/engineering programs at UC Santa Barbara, there’s ample proof that generosity abounds in our society.
But no one wants their hard-earned dollars to be thrown away, or to feed the all-consuming fiscal fire that is the general fund of California—even if it’s claimed to help in cancer research, as in the case of Proposition 29, which even the liberal-leaning LA Times opposes during these tough economic times. Because it’s not like the stem-cell research and high-speed rail funds have been spent so well to the benefit of the Californian economy, right?
So if Governor Brown isn’t the right message bearer, do we have an alternative from the GOP? Hardly—if the flip-flopping, corrupt and/or incompetent Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Quackenbush and Meg Whitman are the best that the California Republican party can offer, then Californians are truly in a fix and will just say “no” to both political parties…and to any new partisan-led budgetary initiatives, to boot.
Which leaves the Californian voting public (and, by extension, the American voting public at the federal level) on its own, and with its own difficult choices to make, and questions to answer:
1) Do we move? And if we opt to move, then move to where?
2) Do we finally distinguish between those who claim to be dependent because of circumstance, and those who truly are?
3) Do we recognize that the lopsided number of welfare/public aid dependents in this state (roughly half, compared to the rest of the nation) is just not sustainable?
4) Do we confront the illegal immigration problem, perhaps by focusing on employers, and perhaps by distinguishing those who are truly at heart American from those who are not an American at heart, because there are only so many jobs and so many educational, health and welfare resources to go around?
5) Do we ask why our tax revenues are so low, and reverse some of our feel-good regulations to restore the confidence of employers to hire and expand in California?
6) Do we recognize that too few are shouldering the load for too many, and that it’s killing our middle class?
7) And do we conclude that the first step to getting out of our fiscal hole is to first stop digging?
(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Vice Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
Tags: Ken Alpern, State Budget, California, Jerry Brown, taxes
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 39
Pub: May 15, 2012