California Republicans sitting on big opportunity

By Dan Walters

The California Legislature's Republicans are receiving lots of unsolicited advice these days from liberal bloggers and pundits that they should use their leverage on Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan to extract policy concessions in return for placing billions of dollars in extended taxes before voters.

Those liberal media advisers, one notes wryly, have complained harshly in the past when Republicans played let's-make-a-deal on budget votes, and they'd probably dislike the things that Republicans would demand.

Nevertheless, the GOP lawmakers do have a one-time shot ― if they want to take it ― at compelling Brown and other Democrats to do things they otherwise would be utterly unwilling to do, such as making sharp reductions in public worker pension obligations, streamlining business regulation and/or re-enacting the Gann spending limit. And a few Republican senators apparently are dickering with Brown on exactly those points.

It's a one-time shot. Last November, voters changed the legislative vote margin on budgets from two-thirds to a simple majority, which means GOP votes are no longer needed for a budget.

But at least four Republicans would have to vote for the constitutional amendment that Brown proposes to extend some temporary taxes for an additional five years and divert the money to local governments and schools.

Since it's the only time in the foreseeable future that Republicans would have the budget leverage they previously had every year, they could shoot the moon, seeking concessions so onerous to unions and other Democratic constituencies that they might drive a serious wedge between their political rivals.

They could tell Democrats, in effect, that's it's a choice between not having tens of billions of dollars in money to support the programs and interests they love and sticking it to the unions and other Democratic allies.

Republicans already are close to an irreducible minimum in legislative seats, plus many of their members are bumping up against term limits and have nothing to lose politically. With much-changed districts on tap for the 2012 elections, the political upside ― securing long-sought ideological goals ― would outweigh the downside risk.

That's not to say, one hastens to add, that political extortion is the right thing to do. The right thing would be to do whatever is necessary to close the state's chronic and very shameful budget deficit and move on, even if it included some temporary tax increases.

Moreover, if Republicans genuinely believe that extending taxes would be harmful and are willing to make the added cuts that a no-tax budget would require, they shouldn't violate their principles.

It is, nevertheless, a golden opportunity for members of the minority party to play political hardball. We'll see if they do.

Dan Walters is a columnist for Sacramento Bee. He can be reached at dwalters@sacbee.com. For back columns, visit www.sacbee.com/walters.