California Democrats Have Compromised on Budget

The California Progress Report has posted a transcript of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass' teleconference in reaction to Governor Schwarzenegger's budget proposal.

Given the media's "both sides aren't compromising" reporting of the situation, I want to emphasize one vital point made by the Speaker when asked about the Democrats' willingness to accept solutions with which their constituencies may disagree:

In the $18 billion of solutions that we put forward, and the economic stimulus that we agreed to, offends every one of our constituencies. All of the constituencies that work on behalf of public employees that fight against the cuts that we put forward. The education coalition--the cuts that we put forward to education. The environmental community--the relaxing of CEQA. Every single one of our constituencies have been offended by what we have done so far. And we were even willing and are willing to go further. But at some point in time, you have to say, if we have met you 75% of the way, if the economic stimulus proposals that you are putting forward will not address the crisis that Mr. Chiang references yesterday, then we have all year long to debate the 25% that are remaining of your proposals. [Governor Schwarzenegger] should at least take an affirmative step and adopt the solutions that we've put forward at this point in time.

This point cannot be repeated enough. The Democrats have been compromising with themselves on the state budget crisis. The Democrats have agreed to horrible spending cuts and other measures that go against their interest groups.

Meanwhile, the Republicans hold fast to their Grover Norquist commanded "no new taxes" pledge -- and the Governor continues to fail to obtain even a single Republican vote for his plan.

(A failure much more relevant to the budget crisis in which we find ourselves than the Governor's pathetic deficit clock.)

The myth of bipartisan intransigence may be a more interesting story for state pundits to tell, but this fiction does nothing to move the state towards a solution to this problem.