No country for bold men

You might imagine the idea of political courage to be challenging and noble. John F. Kennedy found it compelling enough to write a famous book on the topic more than 50 years ago. The brave politicians he celebrated in “Profiles in Courage” included some surprising -- one might even say courageous -- choices for a young Democratic senator preparing to run for president. For instance, Kennedy wrote admiringly of Republican Sen. Robert Taft’s principled opposition to the Nuremberg war trials in 1946.

In California’s budget crisis, the meaning of political courage should be a straightforward matter: a politician’s determination to do the right thing even if it antagonizes his party’s base. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently did that when he indicated that he was open to a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to close the state’s $14.5-billion budget deficit, a departure from his previous insistence that only the latter was an option. Columnists and political observers applauded the governor for growing in office.

Schwarzenegger’s three Republican predecessors -- Pete Wilson, George Deukmejian and Ronald Reagan -- have also been recently praised for their willingness to take on their GOP political bases by raising taxes to close budget shortfalls during their administrations. The plaudits came from commentators who do not usually sit in the cheering section for conservative Republicans.

State Democrats can also antagonize their party’s base. Before voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13 in 1978, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown stayed on message, calling the property-tax-cutting initiative a “consumer fraud, a rip-off, a legal morass and a long-term tax increase.” The state’s educators and public employee unions, key Democratic constituencies, echoed him. The state school superintendent said Proposition 13 would cause class size to grow to 60 students and “do nothing short of destroying education in California.”

After the vote, however, Brown campaigned for reelection that fall as a “born-again tax cutter” determined to make Proposition 13 work, a message that infuriated his base. There were heated debates at the time as to whether Brown was showing political courage or placating tax-cutters. Thirty years later, the topic can still ignite an argument among Californians.

This year’s budget crisis offers ample opportunities for Republicans and Democrats to show political courage. California’s voters deserve a comprehensive examination of the entire $100 billion to be spent this year by the state to determine the best and most effective use of each dollar. Our elected leaders should sort out, as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recommends, “which state programs provide essential services or are most critical to California’s future.” The implicit corollary is that we need to cut the funding of those programs that are least critical to California’s future. Such scrutiny requires, above all, a willingness to identify those government activities that persist and grow because they have strong, determined constituencies -- but weak rationales.

State Democrats have adamantly opposed this kind of rigorous examination. For instance, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) has said Democrats in the Legislature will reject any budget that spends less on education next year than this. Apparently, there is not even one dubious program, one extraneous or misspent dollar in the $40 billion the state proposes to spend on education in 2008-09. His alternative to Schwarzenegger’s proposed 10% cut in education spending is unburdened by nuance: “Raise taxes. That clear enough? Raise taxes.”

The alternative budget recently proposed by the Legislative Analyst’s Office is crowded with challenges for truly courageous politicians to do something to affront their base. Among other things, it urges higher tuition at UC and Cal State institutions, coupled with an increase in need-based financial aid. The office’s underlying challenge is that a budget crisis is a particularly apt time to rethink the idea that tuition subsidies for, say, cardiologists’ kids attending UCLA are a wise use of the state’s scarce resources. Diverting more of the higher-education budget to nurses’ kids relying on financial aid would promote fairness and efficiency.

Many upper-middle-class Republicans send their children to public universities, or plan to. These voters are accustomed to rhetoric about cutting government benefits for the undeserving poor. They will be less receptive to proposals to cut the tuition subsidies the state offers to the undeserving affluent.

Democrats, meantime, have an opportunity to be courageous by repudiating two of their cardinal rules. The first one is that if an endeavor -- such as providing higher education -- is a good thing, spending more money on it is always admirable and spending less is always deplorable. The second rule is that any agreeable arrangement people have become accustomed to is one they have become entitled to.

The faculty and administrators in California’s system of public higher education -- voters who are disproportionately Democratic -- have grown quite accustomed to the advantages of operating an enterprise whose customers all receive subsidies from taxpayers. Reducing those subsidies by means-testing California’s higher education outlays would force them to compete for students and donations on a more level playing field with private universities. It also would help less affluent families and serve the cause of social justice, one which deans and professors usually favor, at least in the abstract.

Raising taxes is certainly not the easiest thing for a politician to do, but it’s far from the hardest or most admirable. After all the speeches and editorials about how the only alternative to a tax increase is to release some prisoners early and close the libraries, most California voters are probably ready to capitulate.

Politicians who wanted to exhibit greater candor as well as greater courage would advocate tax increases without resorting to such “firemen first” threats about the budget. They would first comb through the state budget to identify and eliminate all the programs that have aggressive supporters but no compelling justification or track record -- and then talk about raising taxes. The Legislative Analyst’s Office budget is a model. For the 2008-09 fiscal year, it proposes $2.7 billion of revenue increases, but $9 billion in reduced expenditures after a careful examination of the entire budget. Many Californians would welcome such a proposal as evidence of good faith, admirable courage -- and a sound argument for higher taxes.