 |
 -0 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
Budget puts Democrats' dealing to test Democrats could always count on peeling off a few Republican votes to get the necessary two-thirds majority. Not this year. Lawmakers from both parties agree that a new political dynamic in the Legislature will result in a new form of budget negotiations - one that has the potential of either fostering an unprecedented level of bipartisanship or devolving into a budget fight far messier and time-consuming than last year's. And last year, the budget was a record 67 days late. The tension was exacerbated Wednesday with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' release of his revised budget, which cuts fewer programs than he originally proposed in January, raises more taxes and pushes about one-third of the deficit into the future. Republicans immediately said no deal. Some Democrats also were dismayed. The stakes to pass a budget on time - June 30 is the constitutional deadline - are higher than ever because Wall Street bankers have warned state officials that the ability of the state to borrow money will be partially based on it being able to show that its fiscal house is in order. If the state can't borrow money, or at least borrow it at a reasonable interest rate, a whole series of problems could emerge, including temporarily reducing many state employees' pay to the minimum wage. At the moment, it's not looking good. "Both sides are locked into the rhetoric," said Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, a leader of a small group of rank-and-file legislators from both parties who have been meeting all spring to try to bridge the partisan gap. The major stumbling block to a quick budget is that the Democrats need to please more Republicans than they have in the past. Republicans gained seats in the Legislature in November, so eight of their votes are now needed to pass a budget - six in the Assembly and two in the Senate. And this year, far fewer Republicans than that can be found who are willing to even talk about raising taxes. Term limits, election losses and scorn from Republican colleagues have ushered out of the Legislature all but one of the Republicans who voted on the Democrat-written budget last year. Those Republicans elected to replace them are more ideologically averse to new taxes. By the most generous estimates, only four Republicans might vote for the budget as now written, after subtracting those who won't vote for it for a range of political, ideological and moral reasons. Republicans believe they have compromised enough by accepting a five-year, $10.7 billion bond-borrowing plan and borrowing an additional $1.85 billion against the state's employee pension fund. "We have gone a substantial distance," said Sen. Dick Ackerman, R-Irvine, vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. These factors mean the Democratic budget writers will have to craft a budget that includes more cuts to programs than the Davis plan - and risk defections within their own party. "We're not just looking at targeting certain (Republican) members," said Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza, the Long Beach Democrat who heads the lower house's budget committee. "We're looking at it holistically." That means, "we could find ourselves in the position of losing Democrats on one end and picking up Republicans on the other." "That's not a budget I'm looking forward to promoting," she said.
Assemblyman Keith Richman, the only Republican who voted for the budget last year still in the Legislature, agreed that the center of the
|
|
|
