Why No GOP Budget?
Initially, Assembly Republicans were scheduled to release their version of the budget today. But late last week, after the close of the "working groups" that members broke into to discuss the budget, a decision was made to postpone the release until next week.
Hmm. Maybe I'm just reading into it, but I keep coming back to something the Recess Supervisor wrote about a week and a half ago (emphasis mine):
I hope they're able to finish in time for parade duty tomorrow.
Hmm. Maybe I'm just reading into it, but I keep coming back to something the Recess Supervisor wrote about a week and a half ago (emphasis mine):
Word is the informal target for the Assembly Republican working groups looking for budget cuts is around $800 million - $1 billion. The Governor's budget rang in at just over $58 billion (excluding bond revenue), which means that the fierce fiscal hawks of the Assembly are trying to come up with a whopping 1.5% in cuts - and so far, they're mostly failing. There are some working groups in the Assembly that feel they shouldn't have to cut anything, some members have resigned from their working groups in protest, and still others have reportedly offered - get this - spending motions. Tuesday's closed caucus should be a real hoot.I'm not sure where the "word" was coming from, but, if accurate -- and the delay seems to support it -- it sounds to me like Assembly Republicans are engaged in an intense reenactment of their TABOR battles from last spring.
I hope they're able to finish in time for parade duty tomorrow.
Labels: state budget, state gop
posted by Seth Zlotocha at Tuesday, July 03, 2007
3 Comments:
Fiscal hawks?
The GOp lsot that claim, years ago and they will not get it back being obstructionists to any budget.
It's far to easy to bring up the budgets they did pass, which were careless, pork riddled and focused on non issues like flag buring and gay marriage; not jobs, health care and ethics.
Whatever they come up with, will not be taken seriously...they have a bad track record.
Lest I inadvertently help those goofs, I am trying to keep my mouth shut until they conclude their business. I'd hate to help them buy that clue they so desperately need.
But in the meantime, let me just say that some of the things I've heard they're going to attempt are among the most colossally stupid things you could do from a political standpoint.
One example: doubling your staff's contributions to health care and mandating employee pension contributions is idiotic beyond belief (if you get the AFL-CIO emails you know what I'm talking about). If they are dumb enough to actually do that, I will write about it in greater detail.
Because when you just lost eight seats, what you want to do is deliver yet another kick in the balls to the people who take all the time off to run your campaigns. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see Republican legislative staffers volunteering for Democratic candidates on the weekends next fall. Let's face it, it's less insulting and it's better for their pocketbooks.
Interestingly, the Dem budget would also have state employees paying more for health care, it would just do so via a universal health care plan. As you suggest, it's not tough to see which route will play better politically.
I'm interested to see what else the GOP comes up with next week.
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