ADV-NEWS, California legislators uncork a plan to pick the pockets of the poor. Republicans bruise one another in state budget brawl.

Legislators uncork a plan to pick the pockets of the poor
July 23, 2007


Sacramento — This is how it seems: The state Assembly speaker uncorked two
bottles of very expensive wine as legislative leaders sat around negotiating a
budget deal. They got a little buzz on and decided to go out and mug some blind,
disabled and elderly poor.

That's not exactly what happened, probably. But it's close enough to be
cataloged as nonfiction.

We do know this much because aides to Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) told
reporters: During negotiations in his Capitol office Tuesday, Nuñez served up
two distinguished Napa Valley reds — a $150, 2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia and a
2003 Quintessa Meritage valued at $224.

In the warm afterglow — well, actually, it was the next day — Nuñez took a
stroll around Capitol Park with the two Republican leaders: Assemblyman Michael
Villines of Clovis and Sen. Dick Ackerman of Irvine.

"The wine helped a little bit," a smiling Ackerman told reporters, referring to
the negotiations. "He has good wine."

The libation didn't help enough, obviously. Ackerman and Senate Republicans
still
haven't agreed to the $146-billion compromise budget that everyone else of
importance has in the Capitol. Nor do they have a proposal of their own.

Anyway, it was about the time of the wine-tasting that the legislative leaders
hatched their plan to roll California's most vulnerable. OK, maybe I'm guilty of
a cheap shot. But it's no more a cheap shot than picking the pockets of the poor
in order to bring spending and taxes closer into balance.

The victims list includes 1.2 million impoverished aged, blind and disabled,
plus 500,000 welfare families, mostly single moms with two kids.

In the first category, the state figures on pocketing $123 million by delaying a
$20 monthly inflation adjustment for five months. Rather than getting the bump
next Jan. 1, recipients will have to wait until June 1.

These are people living on the edge off SSI-SSP — federal Supplemental Security
Income and the State Supplementary Program. For most, it's their only income
source. They don't get food stamps.

The current combined federal-state grant is $856 for an individual; $1,502 for a
couple. There will be a $12 monthly federal increase in January, if the state
doesn't wind up confiscating the federal money, as it has in the past.

In the welfare category, called Cal-WORKS, it's no surprise that Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and the Legislature intend to deny a cost-of-living adjustment.
These recipients, living far below the poverty line, haven't gotten a benefit
bump in three years. Their monthly check for a family of three is $723. They
also get $330 in food stamps.

"How's somebody going to live in L.A. on $723 a month?" asks Michael Herald,
lobbyist for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. "It's just a recipe for
homelessness, family instability and kids going into foster care."

Legally, these welfare families should receive a $27 boost in January. But the
pending budget repeals that increase so the deficit-plagued state can save $124
million.

Over the last three years, Herald calculates, Sacramento has grabbed more than
$1 billion from SSI-SSP and Cal-WORKS recipients. This year, the hit totals $247
million.

Yet, in its predawn, sleepdeprived wisdom Friday, the Assembly felt the state
was rich enough to brazenly pass a $900-million package of tax cuts for
Hollywood film companies and other business interests. Senate leader Don Perata
(D-Oakland) said the bill looked like it had been "written by chimpanzees" and
pronounced it "dead on arrival" in his house.

At the same time, the Assembly voted to strip $1.3 billion from public transit,
which many poor and disabled depend on to get around.

It was a sign of scandalized Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's loss of
political clout that he didn't personally fight for the transit funds, as he has
for other L.A. causes in the past. "He has been AWOL," says one leading
Democrat. "He's been wounded."

Democrats, however, haven't exactly been fighting for the aged, poor and
disabled either. Republicans wouldn't be expected to. But Democrats are supposed
to be the defenders of the destitute. Instead, they suddenly surrendered to
Republicans last week after vowing to hold their ground.

Check this Perata comment to reporters after a July 12 negotiating session with
GOP leaders:

"They want us to cut in places that Democrats just didn't get elected to come up
here and cut. So for any program that involves the elderly, people who are
disabled, people who are mentally ill, our mantra is kind of, we're here to
protect those who can't protect themselves."

Nuñez was even more adamant: "We're not going to take the canes away from the
blind. We're not going to kick people out of their wheelchairs … kick poor kids
into the street. We just refuse to do that under any circumstances."

Guess he was speaking literally. Could have fooled me. I and virtually everyone
around the Capitol thought he was promising not to buy Republican votes with
poor people's pocketbooks.

Democrats respond by pointing out that Schwarzenegger wanted to slash much
deeper in SSI-SSP. He also proposed to knock at least 155,000 children off
welfare — kids of parents who did not meet their work requirements — and save up
to $300 million. Democrats blocked that, and spurned the governor's effort to
cut $55 million from a successful program for the homeless mentally ill.

Perata does concede: "I'm not suggesting for one moment that this budget will
make my highlight reel."

But Nuñez, in the predawn haze, seemed to be in a dream world: "We feel very
good about the fact we were able to protect Cal-WORKS. We didn't take food away
from the mouths of poor children in California. We protected senior citizens and
the disabled."

Not exactly.

He added: "We made sure we didn't make cuts to public education."

That's true. They stood up for the powerful education lobby. The poor and
disabled are politically weak.

"There's a lot in this budget," Nuñez concluded, "for us Democrats to be very
proud of."

And ashamed of.

The wine turned to vinegar.
************************************************** *********************

Republicans bruise one another in state budget brawl
August 16, 2007


Sacramento

This is getting good: The Republican governor and Republican senators throwing
knockout punches -- not at Democrats, but at each other.

So this must be the meaning of "post-partisanship:" intraparty pummeling.

California Republicans "have a long, colorful history of spending down their
ammo attacking each other in circular firing squad formation," writes Democratic
consultant Jason Kinney in a party blog, the California Majority Report. "And,
typically, I find it laugh-out-loud funny."

But then Kinney puts on his good government face and adds: "Not today. Not when
the consequences of this unacceptably overdue budget are so real and so
meaningful to so many everyday Californians caught in the Republican crossfire."

The current state budget brawl is setting records, of a sort, although not yet
in tardiness. This budget, which was due July 1, still is only the fifth-latest
in recorded history. The procrastination record is held by the 2002 Legislature.
That year, the budget wasn't enacted until Sept. 5.

But some milestones were laid down this week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first governor in memory -- at least going back
to Pat Brown -- to parachute into the district of a legislator of his own party
and exhort citizens to browbeat their representative into voting his way.

Ronald Reagan -- as governor and president -- loved to proclaim: "If they won't
see the light, we'll make them feel the heat." But he was talking about
Democrats.

Longtime lobbyist George Steffes, who was a Reagan legislative liaison, said,
"We never even considered" pressuring Republicans in their districts. "This is
the first time, and it won't work. They're already angry at him. This will just
make them more angry."

In 1991, newly elected GOP Gov. Pete Wilson privately strong-armed Assembly
Republicans into passing a hefty tax increase to close a huge deficit, calling
lawmakers who wouldn't even consider it bleeping "irrelevant." Still, he didn't
march into their districts.

No governor has been backed into a corner, however, quite like Schwarzenegger.

Senate Republicans -- all but one, Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria -- are flatly
refusing to vote for a $146-billion budget backed by the governor, the Assembly
GOP and Democrats of both houses. The proposal increases general fund spending
by only 1% and doesn't raise taxes. The governor further has promised that he'll
use line-item vetoes to reduce spending by $700 million, completely wiping out a
nagging deficit.

Senate Republicans assert that's not enough.

"They're phony reductions," says Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks). He cites
one example: Schwarzenegger would "save" $160 million by delaying a Medi-Cal
payment for one month, shoving it into the next fiscal year.

He adds: "What the governor says and what the governor does are two
distinctively different things."

Yes, the political atmosphere at the Capitol is polluted.

The toxic air led to a second milestone this week: arguably the nastiest
prepared statement by a legislator about a governor of his own party since at
least four decades ago, when right-winger John G. Schmitz of Orange County was
railing against Reagan.

Schwarzenegger had been in Fresno on Monday telling the locals that Republican
Sen. Jeff Denham , who represents an adjacent district, "should get a lot of
heat. He's your senator, you know. So if you think of one person that can make
the budget pass, Sen. Denham could do it. . . .

"Call him and say, 'It's up to you now. You're our man. We sent you to
Sacramento. Help us. People are suffering.' "

Denham has been targeted as the potential deciding budget vote -- only one more
Republican needs to jump ship -- because he was elected from a relatively
competitive district. But he angrily told Schwarzenegger in a press release to
lay off.

"Governor . . . perhaps you are not listening," the senator declared. "I will
not be bullied, intimidated or pressured into voting for a budget with inflated
revenues, unaccounted expenses or accounting gimmickry.

"Stop the theatrical performances. . . . Playing 'Chicken Little' and saying
'the sky is falling' is not productive."

That sort of formal testiness -- not uttered privately, but in a public
statement -- is virtually unheard of from a lawmaker of the governor's party.
After all, a governor has the power to sign or veto a legislator's bills and
appoint his favorite campaign contributor to the local fair board, if not a
judgeship.

This "Chicken Little" governor merely has been visiting healthcare and
rehabilitation centers that are running short of money because the Legislature
has failed to pass a budget. He has noted that the state already has been forced
to withhold more than $3 billion in payments to hospitals, nursing homes,
hospices, child-care centers, community colleges and small-business vendors.

Senate Republicans respond that the Legislature should authorize emergency
appropriations. Schwarzenegger and Democrats reject the notion, pointing out
that this is what Congress habitually does and vowing they're not going to copy
the federal budget mess.

All this is reminiscent of what then-Gov. Reagan said about Sen. Schmitz when
asked about him by biographer Lou Cannon. "Schmitz strikes me as a guy who jumps
off the cliff with flags flying," Reagan told Cannon.

"I'm willing to take what I can get. You have to take what you can get and go
out and get some more next year. That's what the opposition has been doing for
years."

Reagan was conservative but practical.

The Capitol wisdom is that Schwarzenegger's in-your-face strategy won't work. I
think it might. It can't hurt to focus the public's attention on a few lost
lawmakers stumbling toward the cliff with flags flying. Because a lot of people
could be dragged over the cliff with them.