Best Budget Deal is No Deal

John Seiler:

State senate Republicans continue to be pressed to sell out and vote to put a tax-increase on a special June ballot.

They should resist the temptation.

The real problem remains profligate state spending from the Davis-Schwarzenegger years. The solution is not to gouge Californians yet again with new taxes that would slam each California family for another $5,000 over the next five years.

The solution is to cut the waste in government, beginning with lavish pensions to current and even retired government workers.

Is it short-circuiting democracy to not have a vote, as Brown and others maintain? No. We’ve had plenty of elections lately. We don’t need them several times a year at the whim of the governor.

But if he wants elections, how about also putting on the ballot:

1. Tax cuts.

2. Pension reform.

3. A restoration of the Gann Limit on spending.

Failing to do so, while giving voters only the option of destroying the state even more with economy-killing tax increases, would be a mockery of democracy.

March 14, 2011