Opinion

They might as well be in Reno SACRAMENTO'S RECALCITRANT REPUBLICANS

Wisconsin dispatched state troopers last week to homes of the 14 Senate Democrats who had fled to Illinois to bring its budget process to a halt. No one had to send the California Highway Patrol in search of the Republicans who are obstructing this state's budget process. The CHP officers who patrol our state Capitol see them every day, even though they might as well not be there.

California Republicans have served notice that they have no intention of making any difficult decisions to help bridge a $26 billion budget gap. They don't like the Democrats' blend of cuts and taxes, but they will not offer a balanced-budget plan of their own. They plan to block efforts to allow voters to make the call on a package of tax extensions.

They are hiding in plain sight. They might as well be in Reno, so empty is their contribution to the serious issues facing Sacramento.

The Republicans' commitment to obstruction was underscored when Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County) recently told the Sacramento Bee he was "not interested in providing any votes" to allow voters to decide whether to extend and divert about $12 billion in existing taxes to cover about half of the budget gap.

"They really don't need us to govern at all," Dutton said of Democrats, who control the governor's office and both houses of the Legislature. "They just need us if they want to raise taxes."

While the Democrats do control both houses of the California Legislature, it would take a two-thirds vote of each (a minimum of two Republicans in each house) to put Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax extensions on the June ballot.

In California, as in Wisconsin, there is a failure to cooperate. But here's the difference: In Wisconsin, the Democrats' goal is to preserve the long-established right of public employees to bargain collectively on a wide range of issues related to their workplace; in California, the Republicans' goal is to deny the ability of voters to decide whether an extension of tax increases would be preferable to even deeper budget cuts.

I've covered many budget debates over the years when alleged "budget cuts" meant a cut in the anticipated growth of year-to-year spending. This is not the case in California 2011. The $84 billion general-fund budget plans that just cleared the state Senate and Assembly - with relatively minor differences between them - would roll back spending to 2004-05 levels. Such a budget would be well below the general fund peak of $102 billion in 2007-08. It also counts on voters to approve the tax extensions, or the cuts would be even more severe.

To reach that $84 billion budget, Democrats had to swallow hard to accept about $12 billion in cuts that hit almost everything important to them, including higher education and social services. Sen. Mark Leno, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Budget Committee, said he was particularly pained at a provision that cuts off all welfare benefits at 48 months if a parent is not meeting certain work requirements.

"This has never happened in the history of California," Leno said. "We've never not had a safety net for children."

The Republicans' call for an even deeper cuts-only budget would have credibility if they had been willing to present an alternative of their own. They have not.

Instead, they have gone in the other direction, escalating demands on their no-tax pledges. Last week, about two-thirds of the Legislature's Republicans joined a "Taxpayers Caucus" with a vow to block any measure to allow voters to approve any tax increases unless it included tax cuts of equal or greater value.

The anti-tax rebellion was cheered by Los Angeles right-wing radio kingpins John and Ken, whose top-rated show seems to hold great influence over Republicans in Sacramento. They not only ranted against the Republicans who refused to join the new caucus last week, urging listeners to flood the legislators' phone lines, but their website also features the holdouts' heads impaled on sticks. (John and Ken seem to have missed the memo about the unseemliness of violent imagery in the wake of January's attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.)

The governor, who relishes intellectual interchange, confronted Republicans last week in a highly unusual appearance before a budget conference committee. As is often the case with Brown, he mixed humor and in-your-face persuasion in searching for common ground with his adversaries.

"Pledges are interesting, they make good theater," Brown told legislators. "But the fact is we have to have a plan, we need a solution, and for those who say they don't want to vote, then why are you here?"

Good question: Why are they here, collecting their nearly six-figure salaries plus per diem, if they consider the state's predicament the other party's problem and none of their concern? Perhaps the more pertinent question is: "Are they really here at all?"

California Republicans, unlike Wisconsin Democrats, have not left the state physically. But they are just as surely leaving our state behind.