California Insider

The big question about the bond-and-reserve deal emerging today in the Legislature is how Schwarzenegger is going to get Republicans to vote for it. He’s given up the formula-driven spending limit they wanted as a way to control the growth of government over time, settling instead for what he said he wanted all along: a balanced budget amendment and a new rainy-day fund to prevent the state from ever again digging a hole this deep. But Schwarzenegger will get the votes. He will probably get the minimum he needs for the bond and more than that for the reserve requirement. On the bond, he will tell Republicans that without it, he will almost certainly have to raise taxes, and rejecting it would leave the state without a safety net should the courts strike down the legally questionable defict bond Gray Davis approved last summer. On the bill creating the reserve requirement, he won’t be asking Republicans to vote for anything they find abhorrent. They just won’t be getting all that they would like. Big difference, when it comes to deciding whether to say no to a governor in your own party on something he really wants.

Nearing completion of his cabinet, Gov. Schwarzenegger has appointed San Bernardino County Supervisor Fred Aguiar as his secretary for State and Consumer Services. Aguiar, a former assemblyman, was a lieutenant to Jim Brulte when Brulte was Republican leader in the lower house. The new job sounds obscure, but it can be an important slot: it oversees much of the state bueaucracy as well as the regulatory aparatus. If Schwarzenegger keeps his pledge to enact fundamental change in the way state government does business, Aguiar will be a busy man.

BoifromTroy points out here that by attacking Schwarzenegger over the backfill, locals might actually be hurting their chances of getting the money. Why? Because the governor is the one who has proposed making cities and counties whole for the money they lost when he rolled back the car tax. It's the Democrats in the Legislature who don't want to go there. By attacking the governor, the locals are encouraging the Democrats to stick to their guns.

It's true, as the protesters inundating the Capitol say, that Schwarzenegger's first round of proposed cuts seem to have been done more with an ax than a scalpel. But the governor is getting something of a bum rap from those who say he promised during the campaign to balance the budget by cutting only "waste, fraud and abuse." While he never offered a specific list of potential cuts, a dodge I faulted him for at the time, Schwarzenegger did say many times that balancing the budget was going to take real reductions. At his Aug. 20 press conference after an economic summit in Los Angeles, for example, candidate Schwarzenegger said that under his plan, there would be "substantial cuts." According to my notes, he then added:

"It’s easy to promise people programs. It’s easy to go and say we are going to give you more of this and more of that. Of course I want to give away anything and everything, but can we afford it? We always have to come back to one thing, and that is can we afford it. I teach my kids, don’t spend more than you have. We have to do the same in Sacramento. It doesn’t make any sense if we want to help everyone. We want to reach out to everyone. But can we afford it?

“Sometimes, a surgeon will say, we have to cut to save the patient, and this is what this situation is.”

“Before we promise anything to anyone right now, I think stop. Stop, stop, stop, with the spending. And then let’s analyze the whole thing.”