Budget Is Hostage to Two-Thirds Rule

As we celebrate our nation’s birth, it’s a good time to point out that every year around now California makes a mockery of democracy by rejecting majority rule.

Some would argue that our Founders were not totally devoted to majority rule. They insisted, after all, on a supermajority vote to amend the Constitution. They required a unanimous vote, in fact, for adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

But for passage of a state budget -- a budget that changes every year? This hardly rises to the level of lasting importance that might justify an extraordinary vote margin.

California is one of only three states that require a supermajority vote for legislative passage of a budget. The other two are puny Rhode Island and Arkansas.

In California, unlike Rhode Island, the governor has extraordinary power over budgeting and that serves as an added check on the Legislature. It’s called a line-item veto and allows him to “blue pencil” -- delete -- specific spending proposals.

The U.S. president doesn’t even have line-item veto power. But Congress can pass a budget by a majority vote.

This is important to remember as California enters another fiscal year without a budget -- the 16th in the last 19.

Real people get hurt when Sacramento fails to enact a budget by July 1.

Small-business vendors who sell to prisons and schools may not be paid. Community college students -- including single moms -- are set back when their classes are canceled for lack of money.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have been within coin-tossing distance of a budget agreement for two weeks. They have postured, but haven’t produced.

And the worst culprit is:

* Not Schwarzenegger, although he did slow down negotiations by attempting to trade an on-time budget -- which Democrats wanted more than he did -- for a bipartisan package of “reforms.” He’d like the Legislature to place compromise “reforms” on his November special election ballot.

* Not Democratic legislators, who had given Schwarzenegger practically everything he’d asked for in a budget. “We’re really down to talking about whether to take wheelchairs away from people,” Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) said Friday after a meeting between legislative leaders and the governor.

* Not Republican legislators, despite their refusal to vote for a budget until Schwarzenegger flashes the green light.

No, the worst culprit is the draconian two-thirds vote requirement for passage of a budget.

At the Capitol, Republicans insist on retaining the two-thirds vote because they’re almost always in the minority. It makes them relevant, since no budget can pass without their help.

But while enjoying the relevance, they refuse to accept any responsibility for the deficit spending of recent years -- even though their votes were decisive in passing the budgets.

One Republican who is a maverick on this subject is conservative Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, who received 13.5% of the vote for governor in the Gray Davis recall election and plans to run next year for lieutenant governor.

McClintock has long thought that the budget should be passed by a simple majority vote.

“A perverse result of the supermajority requirement is that it does not constrain state spending,” McClintock says. “What it does is bid up the cost of the budget with each additional vote. Every additional vote comes with louder calls for higher spending.

“You hear, ‘This program is really, really important to me and I’m not going to vote for the budget unless it’s thrown in, plus a park in my district.’ ”

A blue-ribbon commission that studied possible revision of the state Constitution found the same thing in 1996. It recommended scrubbing the two-thirds vote, but was ignored.

“Although conventional wisdom indicates otherwise,” the commission concluded, “the two-thirds requirement does not seem to limit higher levels of spending. In practice, it encourages it.”

Moreover, McClintock contends, allowing the majority party to pass a budget on its own would pinpoint blame. “Voters deserve to know which party is responsible for the budget and hold it accountable,” he says.

But McClintock still favors a two-thirds vote for any tax increase -- which, for my money, should also require only a majority vote. Like in Congress.

McClintock sees it as a minority rights issue.

“The majority should not be able to deny people the fundamental right to their earnings,” the conservative asserts.

Spending and taxes are two different issues, even if they are related.

Californians last year rejected by nearly 2 to 1 a proposal to lower the vote requirement for both budget and taxes to 55%. Backers ran an absurdly gimmicky campaign.

How about reducing just the budget vote to 55%? A poll last month by the Public Policy Institute of California found 54% of voters even opposed that.

Illinois has this intriguing rule: The Legislature can pass a budget on a majority vote until June 1. After that, 60% is needed. It’s a good prod.

We should, at the very least, return to some version of a pre-1962 law that allowed budgets to be passed on a majority vote if spending didn’t increase above 5%. I’d bump that up to 8% to be realistic.

Give the majority party the power to rule and the rope to hang itself.

California’s current version of democracy is dysfunctional and diabolical.

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George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.