California's GOP lawmakers should do the budget math

FROM SACRAMENTO — The math seems pretty simple. But apparently it's too rigorous for many Republican politicians.

To avoid raising taxes and still balance the books in Sacramento, you'd have to virtually shut down state government.

Some politicians are in denial. Some are demagoguing. Some are just ducking. Scared.

The scared are rather pathetic. Here are elected officeholders who represent 475,000 people in an average Assembly district -- 950,000 in a Senate district -- and they cower before conservative bloggers, radio talk entertainers and activists of a declining party.

It's Republican dogma in the Capitol that to vote for a tax increase is "career-ending." Even if true -- and there's evidence both ways -- so what?

These are folks, after all, who sermonize against making politics a career, publicly pretend to worship term limits and preach the virtues of private enterprise. You'd think they'd be eager to return to the private sector. Yet, they're afraid to risk losing out on their next political job.

Scared is a symptom of term limits, when legislators aren't around long enough to gather political self-confidence and standing; of gerrymandering that bunches like-minded voters into single districts to protect seats for a party and punishes bipartisanship (Proposition 11, passed in November, should change that starting in 2012), and closed primaries that deny access to a broad ideological base of voters. But all that's for another day. Back to the math.

The numbers kept flashing in my mind during the weekend as the Legislature -- at least most of it -- labored to win over three Republican votes in each house so it could attain the two-thirds majority needed to prevent state government from falling irretrievably into the dumpster.

The basics: The state has a projected $41-billion deficit through June 30, 2010. It's almost out of cash. Bills are not getting paid. Tax refunds aren't being mailed. Construction work is stopped. Bonds can't be sold.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders finally agreed last week on a package of $15.1 billion in spending reductions, $14.4 billion in tax increases and $11.4 billion in borrowing.

That's close to what Californians want -- a mix. A statewide survey last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 56% of voters favor both spending cuts and tax increases to solve what 82% of the electorate considers "a big problem."