My Kingdom For A Spine

Harold Meyerson laments the lack of spinal integrity in the California Democratic Party.

Like the Gingrichites, the Sacramento Republicans began to close down the government -- in their case, by refusing to pass a budget unless it addressed the shortfall entirely through cuts. But Sacramento 2009 has some signal differences from Washington 1996. For one thing, the Democrats have no well-known leader to argue their case -- both to legislators and to the public. For another, there are no more moderates in the Republicans' shrunken ranks. And crucially, the state Constitution gives the GOP the power to hold to its extremist views and nonetheless prevail. Faced with a choice between badly diminished public services and, should the state continue to be budgetless, no public services at all, the Democratic leadership acceded to the Republicans' demands.

The consequences of those demands are stark. Hundreds of thousands of children will lose their healthcare and tens of thousands of aged and disabled California will lose their in-home support services. Public K-12 schools will continue to lay off teachers and cut class offerings, and both the University of California and the state university system will have their state funding cut by roughly 20%. At a time when state business leaders are crying out for a better-educated workforce, the Republicans in the Legislature have pushed through policies that will make the state both sicker and dumber.

The cutbacks also will deepen the state's already deep recession. Public employees will have less money to spend. City and country redevelopment agencies, their funds impounded by Sacramento, will suspend their construction projects -- and there are precious few construction projects in the state today besides those that redevelopment agencies are funding.

Indeed, the cutbacks may trigger a vicious cycle: By worsening the recession, they further reduce state revenues, which will lead to even more cutbacks as long as the Republicans continue to cling to one-third of the Legislature and to their distinctive brand of concern for the welfare of the state. (They are concerned about California like the Visigoths were concerned about Rome.)

The Republicans' California isn't a state that most Californians want to live in. Given a choice between creating an extraction tax on oil companies (a tax that every other state with oil already has, but which the Sacramento Republicans rejected) and decimating the state's universities, I think Californians would opt to tax Exxon rather than reduce the number of science students. But how do we stop the downward spiral before Republicans reduce the state to the status of an Oklahoma or Alabama or the other GOP garden spots?

First, Democrats in the Legislature should consider calling the GOP's bluff and voting against the budget deal -- but they can't make their case absent a public spokesman. It's time for Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom to rise to the challenge that Clinton did when he stood down Gingrich. And second, Californians need to amend their state Constitution, in convention if need be, to end the practice of minority rule. Democracy -- not to mention the future of the state -- depends on it.

That's the problem of course. The GOP played the scorched earth card, and the Dems rolled over, giving in on every cut the Governator and the state Republicans demanded they take. The best part is the GOP will now demand tax cuts to "grow the economy" and billions more in program cuts to pay for them. They will get them, too. The great GOP experiment that is California is as much the fault of wimpy, spineless Dems as it is GOP fanatics.

The Republican plan seems to be "drive as many people out of the state as possible". Talk about going Galt.