California: new budget breakdown

30 March 2011 |permalink | email article

DAYS of intense bipartisan negotiating in the Capitol talks between Gov. Jerry Brown and Republican lawmakers have broken down again over the California budget impasse and a special election over taxes. Over the weekend, the number of Republican senators negotiating with the Brown administration dropped from five to three.

One of the negotiators who remained, Sen. Bill Emmerson (R-Hemet) said, “We gave it our best. We’re very disappointed. It’s done.” Emmerson, the L.A. Times reported, called Brown a “very honorary adversary” in negotiations, but said that the divide could not be bridged even though much progress had been made on changes in state regulations and pensions. It remains to be seen whether this is another chapter in the political kabuki dance, or a plunge into financial chaos.

As if the problem is not severe enough the California chapter of Americans for Prosperity – the Tea Party-friendly group that was co-founded and funded by the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers – is weighing in on the budget battle.

The brothers launched a radio ad Tuesday targeting two Central Valley Republican legislators who have dared to edge closer to Brown’s plan of tax extensions and budget cuts to close the $26.6 billion deficit.

The ad calls it the largest tax increase in California history. But fact-checking matters and Jean Ross of the nonpartisan California Budget Process disagrees. “If you inflation adjust, the Reagan tax increase is still the largest, followed by Pete Wilson, Ross told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Quotable

“The Obama doctrine he presented Wednesday night was frustratingly nondoctrinal. Where Bush was all bright lines and absolute morality, Obama dwelled in the gray area, outling a foreign policy that is ad hoc and situational …The policy outlined was a cost-benefit analysis between the burdens of war and the need to defend American values across the globe. In the Obama doctrine, there is a tension between bear-any-burden aspirations and the constraints of an overstretched superpower.” – Dana Milbank, in a nuanced Washington Post analysis.  John McCain, a regime change fan, could not grasp it because he believes Obama gave Gaddafi a pass to sleep better at night. 

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