Proposition 56 just might be the law that will save California.
This March, Californians will vote on several different
propositions; the most important of which is surely this one. It so
significant because it could very well solve a root cause of our
current budget crisis ““ one so serious it turned state
politics on its head in the recent recall.
Government budget policy is often boring and yawn-provoking.
However, it’s necessary to discuss because this issue
determines how society’s resources (read: money) are
distributed.
Currently, for the California Legislature to pass a budget,
two-thirds of the legislators must approve it; the same requirement
applies to tax increases (but not to cuts to state programs or
taxes, which merely need a majority). This has made it very hard
for the California government to pass budgets or raise taxes.
Proposition 56, if enacted, will lower the two-thirds requirement
to 55 percent. That is, to make changes in budget-related taxes or
spending, only a slight majority would be necessary.
If passed, the law that Proposition 56 would change is one of
the principal causes of our state’s crisis. The two-thirds
requirement makes it extremely difficult for the government to
agree on a budget.
Remember the budget standoff two years ago? By law, California
budgets must be passed by June 15 every year. In 2002, it was well
after that deadline before the conflicted Legislature could come to
agreement. Deadlock of this nature is a terrible thing for
government because voters really hate it when lawmakers cannot
resolve their differences (think back to voter disgust when the
federal government shut down in the 1990s for similar reasons).
So how did the current budget laws screw up California politics
and the state’s finances? The answer comes in two parts.
The first is that California Democrats do not have a two-thirds
majority in the state government. True, they do enjoy very
comfortable majorities in both the Senate (25 Democrats to 15
Republicans) and the Assembly (48 to 32). The margins are
significant enough that it is very unlikely the Democrats will lose
power to the Republicans any time soon. It’s not like the
U.S. Congress, in which the margins are so small that even a few
seats lost or gained by one side can throw control to the other
party.
The second part of the issue is directly related to the first.
The GOP in California can effectively hold up budget passage
because Democrats always have to convince some Republicans to
compromise in order to pass the budget. This means there is a lot
of bargaining, political maneuvering and compromising between the
lawmakers to reach a budget plan on which they can agree. For
years, this situation has been a real setback for California
politics.
As a result, a set of rules has been created, under which little
gets done when budget conflict arises. For years it has been
unbalanced, with state expenditures exceeding tax revenues. To
actually solve it, (which, by the way, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
has failed to do by billions of dollars), either taxes go up,
programs suffer, or both.
But before any of that can happen, California lawmakers need to
be in a position to fix things. In political science, the term for
these sorts of problems is “transaction costs.” These
are the costs associated with organizing the different people and
interests within the government in order to reach agreement. The
higher the transaction costs, the more difficult it is for
government to accomplish anything.
The two-thirds majority requirement is an unacceptably high
transaction cost. Its presence may be the principal source of our
budget crisis, the explosive political expression of which was our
fiasco of a recall.
Naturally, some will argue that it is good to have a high
requirement for budget passage. After all, we are talking about
billions of dollars here. But, we must remember that having the
two-thirds threshold has not exactly served us well ““ seeing
that the budget crisis today is dire, student fees are on the rise,
and programs serving all Californians are on the chopping block.
What we need now is change, and that will be so much harder to
accomplish as long as legislators’ hands are tied.
Originally, Democrats wanted this bill to pass because a lower
requirement combined with a Democratic governor would make
everything run a lot smoother for them. Now that
Schwarzenegger’s in charge, this sort of rationale makes less
sense.
Nonetheless, reducing the requirement from 67 percent to 55 will
almost certainly mean the California government can get more done,
and faster. Real changes will be more possible, and hopefully the
state won’t face such terrible crises or disruptive recalls
in the future. Vote yes on 56.
Raimundo is a fifth-year economics and history student.
E-mail him at araimundo@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.