Legislature Defeats Republican Budget Plan
In news that should surprise no one who has followed the State Budget impasse, both the Assembly and Senate took up the Senate Republican Budget proposal this week, and both quickly voted it down. The Senate acted first on Monday, September 8, 2008, rejecting AB 1793 (Committee on Budget) along party line votes. In describing their Budget, which rejects the Governor’s proposed one-cent sales tax increase in favor of more borrowing, Republican leadership said it wasn’t the time to increase taxes, and cited a Board of Equalization analysis stating that a 1% sales tax increase would eliminate 58,000 jobs.
A day later, on Tuesday, September 9, 2008, the Assembly took up the Senate Republican plan, SB 1087 (Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review), and also voted it down. The fact that some Republicans were reflected as not voting caused speculation that the Assembly might be nearing a compromise, but we quickly learned that the not voting Republican members were not even in the Capitol at the time of the vote.
The Assembly and Senate also refused to take up a Republican proposal that would appropriate billions to the State Controller to pay the current expenses of the state government, excluding salaries and per diem of the Members of the Legislature, from July 1, 2008, to August 31, 2008, inclusive. Last week the Governor blasted the Republican proposal to appropriate monies for programs that are not being funded in the absence of a Budget. In doing so, he indicated that it would “require the state to take out a short-term loan that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe more than a half-billion—and would dig our Budget hole that much deeper and make our cash situation that much worse.”
—Deborah Harmon