It’s Time to Sing a New Tune on the Budget, but Who Has the Courage?

Sacramento--One nagging question in Sacramento has become: When will Republican lawmakers quit grumbling and accept victory? A second, more important query is: When will all the politicians -- legislators and the governor -- summon up enough courage to honestly confront the state’s budget deficit?

The answer to the first question is: Any moment now.

Jockeying for political cheap shots in November and trying to project relevancy while in the legislative minority -- which is what much of the Republican griping this past week seems to be about -- are not acceptable reasons for stymieing passage of a budget. And the GOP governor has been conveying that message.

Republicans sided with big-city mayors in quashing a compromise between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrats on local government funding, a move that smacked of grandstanding.

But more glaring has been the Republicans’ carping about Schwarzenegger’s apparent caving in to Democrats on spending -- especially for higher education and the disabled, aged poor and welfare moms.

“Republicans are really a sack of ingrates,” asserts one Schwarzenegger advisor, who asked not to be identified.

GOP lawmakers got their budget victory up front when Schwarzenegger cut the car tax by $4 billion. Then he ruled out a tax increase for the next budget and stuck with his pledge.

A budget without a tax hike has always been the Republicans’ No. 1 priority, with no close second.

Schwarzenegger pushed Democrats as far as he could to cut spending, the advisor adds, but they still dominate the Legislature. “He wasn’t willing to sit here gridlocked until September without a budget. It’s important to show Wall Street that we have our act together.”

Many Republicans have groused privately about the evolving budget’s red ink. One who has been outspoken publicly is moderate Assemblyman Keith Richman of Northridge.

“This is deja vu all over again,” Richman says. “Last year, Democrats refused to make spending reductions because they were concerned about people dying in the street. And Republicans refused to raise taxes. So what did we do? We borrowed $18 billion and rolled the problem over another year.

“Now Democrats are unwilling to make spending reductions and Republicans are unwilling to raise taxes and fees. It’s the same. It does have to change.”

Richman says that Schwarzenegger’s recent budget revisions have added roughly $2 billion to the operating deficit, pushing it to a projected $10 billion by the 2006-07 fiscal year.

This by a governor who keeps insisting that state politicians should “live within their means” and “tear up the credit card.” Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill found $20 billion in “outstanding budget-related borrowing” in a revised $103-billion spending plan Schwarzenegger offered in May.

Republicans have good reason to moan, but -- with the exception of Richman -- they also should be pointing fingers at themselves. Richman was the only Republican lawmaker last year who advocated a tax increase to help make ends meet.

You can’t expect Democrats to pare back state employee pensions and benefits, let alone cut healthcare for the poor and disabled, unless Republicans lift their blockade of new taxes. Democrats aren’t going to make welfare moms and middle-class civil servants sacrifice without extracting higher taxes from California’s richest residents.

And any governor or legislator who believes California can truly balance its books -- stop cooking numbers and rerunning gimmicks -- without raising taxes is haplessly fantasizing.

Hill consistently has said the state “will not be able to simply grow its way out” of the structural deficit, even with a rebounding economy.

Ed Leamer, an economist who heads the UCLA Anderson business forecast, says nobody in Sacramento seems to be pondering the probability of another downturn by the end of this decade. “Now when we’ve got sunny weather is the time to prepare ourselves for the storms ahead,” he says.

“We should bite the bullet. Absent our ability to identify more spending cuts, we should be obligated to cover current spending with current taxation -- and not with all these gimmicks that push off the problems.”

Leon Panetta, a former congressman from Monterey who was budget director and chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, characterizes Sacramento’s current budgeting this way: “It’s the same dance with a different song.”

A song played by Schwarzenegger rather than Gray Davis.

“I told the governor [Schwarzenegger],” Panetta says, “the lesson we learned in Washington is that, at some point, unless you put everything on the table, you’re going to wind up just kicking the ball down the same trail.”

Rather than embarking on a more prudent path.

When will Sacramento politicians summon the courage to put everything on the table -- spending and taxes? When the governor gets brave enough to risk his political capital and lead, especially his own party. Most likely next year.

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