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Mulish Budget Battle Unique Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) said there would not be a budget without tax increases, fuming in a stream of vulgarity at Republicans who, in his view, know full well that they can't close a $38-billion gap on cuts alone. "There isn't one Republican who will vote to cut the schools like you would have to," Burton said. "Their deal doesn't work. Anybody who can add two and two up to four says it doesn't work." Only moderately less combative, Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) said: "The liberals in Sacramento are in denial" about the nature of the budget problem. "It's a spending problem." Brulte accused the Democrats of dealing in bad faith. Davis, he said, adopted the Republicans' idea of borrowing to cover the deficit, but then proposed restoring some money to state programs that Republicans want to see cut. "They take our good-faith effort at a deal and use it to expand state spending," Brulte said. Assembly leaders are just as strident. Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) blames the budget deadlock on the refusal of GOP lawmakers to support higher taxes. "They are extremists," Wesson said of the Republican leaders who are playing their minority status to the hilt. The ability to deny Democrats the six GOP votes needed to pass a budget in the Assembly "allows the extremists to hold us hostage," he added. "We need some adult supervision here," responded Assembly Minority Leader Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks). "You can't continue to spend more money than you take in." Many factors are probably contributing to the bitterness of California's budget debate. A threatened recall drive against Davis, for instance, has injected election-year imperatives into the political environment. Some legislators and others say that is pushing Davis to look out for key constituencies — labor unions and teachers, among others — as he faces the possibility of having to fend off a recall as early as this fall. In his revised May budget, the Democratic governor backed away from the deep spending cuts he proposed in January. On their side, Republicans have little incentive to bet their political futures on compromise. Of the four Assembly Republicans who voted for Davis' 2001 budget, two were later defeated in primary contests for other offices, and two others bowed out of politics. The only Republican senator who voted for Davis' 2002 budget is now working for the Davis administration. Although California's deadlock and vitriol are particularly pronounced, other states are grappling with tax hikes and spending cuts as well. Since the recession of the early 1990s, many states have backed away from tax increases as the answer to anemic revenues, said Arturo Perez, fiscal analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. As the current crisis took off last year, states adopted a modest $9.1 billion in tax increases, only about one-third — measured in current dollars — of the tax increases imposed in 1991-92, Perez said. Broad-based taxes are especially unpopular. Most of the states that have raised taxes looked to cigarettes, gambling and university tuition for increased revenues before raising sales, property and income taxes. And though most states have resolved their shortfalls with less rancor than California, the debates have not gone smoothly. Of the 24 states where legislatures already have adjourned for the year, four were in special session last week, and several others went through extended sessions over budget disagreements, Perez said.
It isn't always Republicans demanding to hold the line on taxes and Democrats clamoring to spend.
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