The late economist Herbert Stein, who as a former advisor to the Nixon White House was not the sort of person easily mistaken for a "liberal," had little use for fiscal dodges no matter where they sprang from on the ideological spectrum.
Stein was particularly wary of the chicanery that surfaces in Washington at budget time to protect lawmakers from themselves, such as budget-balancing mandates like Gramm-Rudman. "I am both amused and annoyed at the sight of political leaders saying that they have to cut taxes because if they don't, 'politicians' will spend the money," he wrote in 1999. "I don't think we should allow our elected officials to predicate policy on their own weakness."
I wonder what Stein would have made of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In releasing his budget this week, the governor described himself, pitiably, as a victim of circumstance. Spending formulas embedded into law, he suggested, cornered him into balancing the budget by skinning the poor, old and sick.
"This budget doesn't have much in it I want," he said, calling it "a budget that is forced upon us by a broken system."
For someone who accumulates praise for his do-it-now demeanor the way a scow collects barnacles, the governor certainly does a lot of whining. In truth, his budget can have anything in it he wants. If any California governor in the last 20 years has had the chops to prevail over this "broken system," it's him.
Yet he insists, "This is all the money we have.... We must live within our means."
The only thing limiting the amount of money the governor can spend is his doctrinaire refusal to acquire it from the most efficient and least costly source: the tax rolls. It's obvious from his budget that he endorses in principle most of the spending programs the state undertakes -- on schooling, road building, environmental protection and so on -- or he would have taken a sharper ax to them.
But he keeps running from his responsibility to inform the voters that the right way to pay for them is cash on the barrelhead. Instead, he argues that putting the bill on the charge card -- more than $2 billion in new debt this year alone -- is the more responsible path.
Nor is it accurate to say that a tax increase is a "liberal" solution. Govs. Pete Wilson and Ronald Reagan, facing deficits like today's, temporarily raised the top tax rates on the state's richest residents to 11%.
