Nothing like waiting until the last minute.
Today is the final day of regular legislative session, so lawmakers decided it might be a good time to convene the summer's first floor vote on the state budget. The same budget that was supposed to have been passed 77 days ago.
Lawmakers won't do anything hasty, like actually approve a balanced spending plan. That requires a two-thirds vote of both houses, and even lawmakers know they will fall well short of meeting that threshold.
(We should note here that the Legislature isn't solely to blame. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made hefty ultimatums to cut pensions and restrict future spending. And voters have made a perfect mess of the state's budget process.)
Instead, leaders suggest it's a chance to take the temperature of the Legislature. To show people that Democrats refuse to cut social services and schools, while Republicans refuse to vote for tax increases.
You know, the kinds of things we've been hearing about for months in news releases.
If anything, today's votes – one on most of Schwarzenegger's budget, the other on the Democratic version, without tax hikes – will reflect this: After two months of fighting, Democrats and Republicans still remain miles apart on a solution.
CAMPAIGN WATCH
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that many politicians and the state's political parties have little interest in political reform, noting that he had been urged to leave vacant the chairmanship of the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. "It just shows you that really, in the end, they have very little interest in reform." Schwarzenegger appointed Dan Schnur chairman of the agency in June to complete the remainder of Ross Johnson's term.
WORTH REPEATING
"The next thing you know, we're not going to be able to carry a tarantula in a plastic bag."
SEN. TOM HARMAN, Huntington Beach Republican, opposing a bill that would ban openly carrying unloaded handguns in certain public places.
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