Moving beyond smoking tent budgets - Mobilizing a new electoral majority
by Richard Holober, Executive Director,
Consumer Federation of California
August 17th, 2009
Perhaps Albert Einstein was gazing into a crystal ball, viewing California’s 2008-2009 budget debacle, when he said “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Our state is now a full year into crisis budget deals and do-over after do-over. As the revenue assumptions built into the latest budget unravel, don’t be surprised to see a new special session for mid-year cuts in the fall of 2009.
Each round of closed-door budget talks has consisted of Democrat leaders negotiating the terms of their surrender to minority Republicans. Sacramento offers no hint that a generational political re-alignment occurred in the November 2008 election.
A new majority in our nation, and a 60% voter majority in California, repudiated the conservative ideology of deregulation and privatization and embraced a more robust government role, including greater support for social services. Yet in California, Democratic leaders remain marooned in a Bush era retreat in the face of a small block of conservative lawmakers that insist on cutting government, regardless of the harm to education, seniors, the poor and the middle class.
Of course California has terribly undemocratic two-thirds super majority budget and tax rules. This super-majority requirement gives extraordinary power to a small minority of lawmakers that refuse to support any proposal except a “cuts only” budget.
For lawmakers whose only reflex is to make a deal, the two-thirds budget rule is the conversation stopper. For organizers, the two-thirds budget rule is where the conversation begins. The question we should ask is how do we change the debate, and build a movement for budget fairness and democratic rule?
This will be a very long campaign that cannot be launched as long as progressives retain the bunker mentality that has kept us entirely focused on fighting (often against Democratic leaders) to slow the hemorrhaging in each round of budget givebacks.
Progressive organizations must recognize that working the inside deal to protect one sector’s funding even at the expense of other vulnerable communities only strengthens the governor and the minority party’s cutback goal.
The 2010 elections provide a starting point for the long campaign. A strategy that organizes around tangible and popular objectives can force tax and budget fairness into the political mix. Place a measure on the November 2010 ballot to impose a severance tax on big oil.
California’s four largest oil producers made $95 billion in profits in 2008 and paid oil extraction fees to every state where they pump oil—except California. Let’s hear what the candidates for governor have to say about an initiative that makes Exxon Mobil and Chevron pay their fair share to keep our colleges and universities open.
Place a proposition on the November 2010 ballot to repeal the secret $2.5 billion in new corporate tax cuts that were granted since October 2008. Force legislative candidates to tell us if they think it was right to hit working families with new tax hikes at the same time they were giving brand new handouts to the wealthiest companies.
Qualify an initiative to repeal the two-thirds budget and tax rules, and let candidates state whether they believe in democracy or in the minority tyranny that has devastated education, local government and senior services. Surely, three budget fiascos in one year should have taught us to take this fight out of the smoking tent.
It is time for labor, community based groups and our allies in elected office to overcome the bunker mentality, start working together, and begin mobilizing the new electoral majority for the long and winnable campaign for budget and tax fairness.
