"The two-thirds vote for the budget has not contained spending, and it blurs accountability," McClintock says. "If anything, in past years, it has prompted additional spending as votes for the budget are cobbled together."
Cobbled together by trading votes for pet programs and pork projects.
"It dilutes the responsibility of the majority party for the budget," McClintock continues. With a simple majority vote, he believes, the ruling party "would be much more careful about what it put in the budget."
Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines of Fresno County is moving toward McClintock's position, but isn't quite there yet. "There's a discussion to be had," he concedes.
"As a conservative Republican, it's frustrating to work out a budget that's always bad. You're just trying to make it a little bit better, but it's still never one you like."
Villines adds: "I can understand the argument to let the majority party own the budget. If people realized how out of touch the liberal majority party was, they'd be shocked. Voters would say, 'Why are we electing these liberal Democrats to run California?' "
Whatever. At least the budget might get passed on time.
Both incoming Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) say they'll consider developing a 2010 ballot initiative to permit majority-vote budgets.
"I'm telling you, I'm very serious about it," Steinberg says. "We can't keep doing this. This is ridiculous. It's unproductive."
Bass figures there would be plenty of financial support for a ballot campaign from labor unions, healthcare providers and others who rely on public funds and are frustrated by incessantly tardy budgets.
"This budget crisis we're in is a perfect example of why we need to be like 47 other states," Bass says. "I'm not sure what we have in common with Arkansas and Rhode Island. . . .
"We would have had a budget by the constitutional deadline, June 15."
Maybe not this year. Without a tax increase, it's virtually impossible to permanently plug the current $15-billion deficit hole. And a tax hike also requires a two-thirds majority vote, a handcuff applied 30 years ago by Proposition 13.
Selling Californians -- let alone Republican politicians -- on a simple majority vote for tax increases would be a tough sell. McClintock and Villines would oppose that.
