GOP Says Budget Proposal is Jerry Brown's Job

By Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle
02.02.11

A day after Gov. Jerry Brown challenged Republicans to put tax measures on the ballot and chided them for not having an alternative plan, GOP leaders said that proposing a balanced budget is the governor's job, not theirs.

Speaking to reporters after the speech Monday, Brown said of Republicans, "Just show me an idea. I've had drinks with people, but I haven't gotten any paper or any articulated position other than 'no' or 'no for now but check back later,' " Brown said.

But Republicans said they have for years put out ideas for changing the state that have been summarily rejected by the majority Democratic Legislature, and they have no reason to expect something different. The challenge from Brown is a red herring, they said, and an attempt to knock Republicans off their message.

"The governor is the one who is supposed to prepare a balanced budget," said state Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar (Los Angeles County), who is the top Republican on the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee. "The governor put out his own budget with an $11-to-$12 billion hole in it. That's not our responsibility, that's his responsibility."

He added later, "We're the minority party here, we don't have a lot of say."

Brown's budget proposal relies on $12.5 billion in cuts and fund shifts and $14 billion in tax increases and extensions, with $2 billion of that going to support public schools above the legally required base amount.
 
Two-thirds votes

Democrats are two votes short of a two-thirds majority in the Assembly and three short in the Senate.

Huff noted that Republicans have had budget proposals in the past, but they have not made it through the Legislature and have often even been blocked in the early committee process. Republicans last August backed a budget proposal that largely mirrored that of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, including massive cuts to social services and the elimination of the state's welfare program, but it was rejected. 

Although voters in November changed the state Constitution to allow a budget to be passed by a majority of the Legislature instead of the previous two-thirds requirement, Brown wants a two-thirds majority vote to have a special election in June, and he wants his proposed cuts put in place on a faster timeline. Doing that requires a two-thirds vote.

Ideas already around 

Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway, R-Tulare, said there is no need to present an alternative budget because the Republicans' ideas have been bandied at the Capitol for years. Those include reforms to public employee pensions, easing rules for collective bargaining, streamlining regulations and making it easier for employers to create jobs.In 2008, Republicans proposed a series of budget measures to erase a $15 billion gap without increasing taxes, but those were rejected, too.

The challenge, though, is that reforms often take time to implement and savings might not appear for years.
The California Constitution mandates that the state have a balanced budget each year, which means erasing a $25.4 billion deficit by June 15.
 
Asked whether the reforms would bring the state to that goal, Conway said, "We're going to keep working at it, and when we get to that number we'll be sure to let you know."

Request is 'a trap'

Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party, called the request for a Republican alternative a "trap" and said that "this is ludicrous. This is not serious. This is political gamesmanship."

"Does anyone think for a second that (Senate President Pro Tem Darrell) Steinberg, (Assembly Speaker John) Pérez or the governor would take it seriously? Give me a break," Nehring said.

In another political move, Jon Coupal, the president of the anti-tax Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, on Tuesday floated his own idea for the tax proposal, taking a page from Brown's call to let the people weigh in on the budget. He said Republicans should support a ballot measure to raise taxes if the ballot included another measure that would reduce taxes by the same amount.

Brown, speaking to KCBS radio later Tuesday, blasted that idea. "You've got to get real here," he said. "Don't say I'm going to solve this problem by creating a bunch of new problems that we'll have even more trouble handling."