Two Men Alone in a Boat

Two California legislators are all alone, with no one else jumping aboard, after daring to propose a compromise budget plan. Like any realistic budget in this hard-times year, the proposal by Assembly members Keith Richman (R-Northridge) and Joe Canciamilla (D-Pittsburg) is full of pain and demands for sacrifice -- yes, including tax increases and program cuts. At least it’s a plan that aims to get the state through this black period and into economic recovery.

Richman and Canciamilla certainly get points for political courage. After them, the drop-off is steep. The so-called Big 5 -- Gov. Gray Davis and four top legislative leaders -- met for two hours Tuesday without progress. Assembly Democrats were framing a proposal for a vote and their leaders were planning a road trip to promote the plan of cuts and tax increases. Overall, Davis seems out of gas and lawmakers are stuck in place.

Party orthodoxy rules: The Republicans reject all tax increases and Democrats won’t consider budget cuts beyond those already made. In hewing to the demands of their parties’ special-interest constituencies they are paralyzed.

Passing a budget is the single greatest responsibility of the Legislature. If there’s no budget by July 1, and thus the state still has no legal authority to spend, lawmakers will be guilty of worse mismanagement than anything Davis is accused of by his recall proponents. If the trench warfare continues into the summer, the state may run out of the borrowed money it is using to pay the bills and have no way to borrow more.

Even if government doesn’t shut down, every day without a budget is tens of millions more dollars down the drain at unsupportable previous-year spending rates. If the state goes to Aug. 31 without a budget, it will have added $2 billion to the shortfall.

The most immediate problem is that Republicans won’t accept a half-cent sales tax increase to finance the $11-billion deficit the state faces June 30 -- a tax that Wall Street insists on. Democrats balk at the additional $781-million hit that education would take, along with other cuts, under Richman-Canciamilla. A half-cent temporary sales tax is nothing compared with the across-the-board taxes -- sales, income taxes, new fees -- that got California through the early 1990s recession. The $781-million cut would still leave the schools with what’s legally considered full funding, far better off than they were a decade ago.

The Legislature has in its care 35 million Californians and an economy larger than all but five or six nations’. Surely these elected officials will not drag the Golden State and all of its people into fiscal chaos rather than risk disappointing a handful of demanding lobbies.