The Throttle Is Wide Open on a Big Spending Binge

When Gov. Gray Davis signs the new state budget into law, which is expected today, California for the first time will have a $100-billion-plus spending document. That’s a one followed by eleven zeros, in case your calculator doesn’t count that high. It’s also a 21% increase in state government from the previous year, and more than double what Sacramento spent a decade ago.

But if you think California’s lawmakers are unique in their eagerness to feast on the fruits of other people’s wealth, guess again. Presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush also want to binge. In fact, a quick look at the Bush campaign’s news releases for the month of June shows no less than 10 releases with the headline, “Bush Proposes Increase in Funding for . . . “

Which begs the question: Among Republicans, whatever happened to the notion of fiscal conservatism?

The easy explanation is that Republicans have fallen under the spell of what one GOP consultant calls “cash-register politics.” This is not the traditional tax-and-spend politics that separated liberals from conservatives in the Reagan ‘80s and the Gingrich ‘90s. Republicans once railed against big government, now they’d rather put money where their mouths were. They’re learning the fine art, as crafted and perfected by Bill Clinton, of offering money both as a solution to a problem and a symbolic means of proving empathy. You say that Bush doesn’t care about education? Bush goes to Silicon Valley, as he did the other week, and announces a $2.3-billion math and science education plan. You say that Bush isn’t genuinely compassionate? He announces an $800-million plan for disabled Americans, with the Reaganesque label: “New Freedom Initiative.”

What, then, will it take to rein in government spending? How far can these politicians go?

Take California as an example. Assume the economy stays hot, and the revenue stream doesn’t dry up. Also assume that Democrats continue to control the two houses of the Legislature and the governorship. Spending continues unabated. Will this eventually lead to a revolt a la the Proposition 13 anti-property tax initiative?

According to the folks that should know, don’t expect it soon. “The level of fear is not there that was there in 1978,” says Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., whose founder was the co-author of that year’s Proposition 13. “Perhaps we’re on the brink again with housing prices, but right now there’s a general sense that there’s a ton of money out there.”

And that might be the conservatives’ ace in the hole: excess of wealth. Each year of record revenue brings with it not only photo ops for incumbents but the nagging questions of what government is doing with the public’s money and what taxpayers are getting in return. Sooner or later, the theory goes, the public will declare it’s had enough with government’s current course, and thus a tax revolt will be born. The pendulum swings.

Conservatives in California will tell you this is already beginning. They will say that’s why Proposition 26, which proposed to lower the threshold for approving local school bonds, failed last March. Older Californians looked at the measure, asked why it was needed when the state already was investing in education at record levels and voted it down. In other words, fiscal conservatism carried the day.

In the meantime, the era of “cash-register politics” continues.