Krugman and Kevin Drum both have pieces about the filibuster today. Drum on how to get the ball moving on filibuster-reform:
So what would it take to get people to care? One answer: a high-profile supporter. If Sarah Palin suddenly tweeted that the filibuster is a threat to democracy, for example, everyone would start talking about it. But who else is a plausible candidate for this? The president, of course, but he’s not going to. Anyone else?
Another answer: a popular, high-profile issue that gets blocked repeatedly by a 40-vote minority. Unfortunately, genuinely popular, high-profile issues generally don’t get filibustered. That’s why Supreme Court vacancies are filled pretty quickly but appellate court vacancies aren’t. So it’s not clear what issue would fit the bill here.
And a third answer: some kind of fabulously effective grass roots campaign. That seems pretty unlikely to me, though. Any other thoughts?
The filibustering of anything and everything is going to get worse, not better. Republicans are likely to break even or pick up seats in the Senate and they’re likely to attribute their gains elsewhere (the Senate is particularly unfavorable for them in terms of picking up seats, it’s almost a certainty that they’ll pick some seats in the House) to the power of teabagging.
Too many people outside California regard the California IOU disaster as some quaint thing that happened in a crazy part of the country. That crazy part of the country contains over 10% of the country’s population. If it can happen there, it can happen at the national level, not with IOUs per se, but with even more catastrophic results.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Seconded. I’ve seen a lot of people say the California disaster can’t happen on the federal level because the federal govt doesn’t share the 2/3 requirement on spending bills.
Except that the filibuster is possibly even worse than the 2/3 spending requirement. At least California can pass environmental regulation…
Jim
You mean in the House, or in Congress? I agree.
But I do think there’s a “popular, high-profile issue” that Republicans would try to block: tough financial regulation.
MikeJ
I’ll preemptively cite The Myth Of The Filibuster: Dems Can’t Make Republicans Talk All Night.
Sentient Puddle
At this point, it seems to me the most realistic way of screwing around with the rules of the filibuster involves winning seats in Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida, coupled with a Snowe defection.
Beyond that, yeah, fuck if I know how to make the public care about the filibuster.
Brien Jackson
I guess California makes, a nice folly but I would point out that the major difference between the Senate and California is that the latter has a super-majority requirement for passing tax increases and budgets, whereas in the Senate those things are, at least possibly, not subject to the filibuster. The problem with the Senate is more that the routing use of the filibuster grinds everything to a slow crawl, and can make it next to impossible to pass anything not related to taxes and spending.
Joey Maloney
Financial regulation? Too arcane, too complicated to be understood by the newsninnies, too easy to teabag as creeping socialism.
Puppies. We’re going to need to develop a popular, high-profile issue that involves puppies. And Brawndo. Also, too.
Joey Maloney
Oops, used the dreaded S word.
DougJ
You mean in the House, or in Congress?
I mean in the House of Representative, yes. They may only break even in the Senate while picking up 20 House seats.
The Grand Panjandrum
Ballot propositions and a super-majority required to approve spending in California are a good analog to the way our Congress operates in DC. Tom Harkin has a decent suggestion for moving the goalposts. His proposal doesn’t literally get rid of it, but it does effectively eliminate the filibuster as a tool to deny an up or down vote for passage. An incremental approach like this may be the only hope for change other than getting a high profile individual to come out in favor of it.
Once enacted these guys don’t want to give up ANY tool.
BFR
Yeah, that’s almost a certainty. The other issue is that the partisanship aside, the filibuster grants enormous leverage to anyone who’s on the fringe of any issue – in the case of healthcare, we saw how the 51st through 60th most liberal Senators were able to wreak huge amounts of havoc.
You can bet that the 10 most conservative Democrats and 10 most liberal Republicans would fight like hell to prevent getting rid of the filibuster. This means that it’s really going to be a stretch to ever get to 50 votes to change the rules.
What I think will happen is that the Senate will grind down to irrelevancy in 10 to 20 years. More and more power will find it’s way to the Executive branch and we’ll eventually just have an elected dictatorship.
jibeaux
This really needs to be our highest priority moving forward, unless we want climate change, financial reform, etc. etc. subject to the same equal-opportunity-kill-me-now effects that HCR had. That said, I’m really at a loss as to how to do it. I have read that a rules change requires a simple majority on the first day of a new session. If that’s accurate, I’m going to go with that as the best course of action. If we have to get 60 votes, the only feasible course I could plot would literally involve flipping one or both of the ladies from Maine into Democrats, and if they haven’t done it yet they ain’t gonna. I’m not so concerned about raising public awareness, since as we all know public support for something doesn’t mean crapola.
jibeaux
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I would be pleased as punch with that, but I don’t think it would get any votes that eliminating the filibuster wouldn’t get.
BFR
@jibeaux:
That won’t work. Let’s say you do replace the two from Maine – they’d likely have liberal replacements but that just means that the next two most conservative democrats would gain a huge incentive for supporting the current rules.
Moving the bodies around isn’t going to change the incentives.
DougJ
@Brien
That’s true and a good point. But I think there are also ways in which national paralysis is worse than state paralysis.
Brachiator
California has nothing to do with the federal filibuster issue, either by analogy or metaphor.
Too many people outside California think that California’s budget problems are all the result of a selfishly stubborn Republican minority preventing budgets from being passed.
This just ain’t the case. Had budgets been allowed by a simple majority, California would be in exactly the same place, but just would have got there faster, since no politician is interested in addressing the structural deficit built into the California budget.
And the last budget deal was done behind closed doors with an agreement by the governor and the Democratic and Republican leadership. But I guess that the myth of the foot-dragging GOP minority holding up the budget is now an official Political Urban Legend, immune to all facts.
Zuzu's Petals
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Well except that the California problem is that spending exceeds revenues; it’s more likely that the 2/3 vote requirement for raising taxes is the issue. Not to mention the balanced budget requirement, which doesn’t exist on the federal level.
Roger Moore
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Nope. Instead it has a de facto 3/5 majority requirement, which anyone can see is just ever so much different from a 2/3 requirement.
Zifnab
@BFR:
Wait. The Senate, which jealously clings to power at all costs, is going to grind down to irrelevancy and cede power to the executive? That sounds somewhat counter-intuitive.
The current system is a problem, but it’s not out-and-out broken. Sixty votes is a challenge to get, but not impossible. And various safety valves – like Reconciliation – give the Senate a way around the filibuster.
The current Senate layout is temporary. Republicans can’t maintain this stagnant ‘roid rage forever. They’re going to burn out when they become incapable of passing their own legislation. Guys like Vitter and Sessions will eventually wear out their welcomes in their states.
I mean, you only have to look as far as California. The state isn’t really getting more red for it’s troubles. Economic hardship makes liberals of us all. They’re a state senator or two away from losing their tax-proof minority. And when that dam breaks, it’s all over ‘cept for the crying.
I think the Tea Party caucus is going to make a mess of Republican politics and spoil a lot of their national pick up opportunities (see: Mark Rubio in Florida, Hoffman in NY-23). And once it’s clear that only conservative democrats have any leverage in the Senate, you’re going to see the funding well dry up. And once the funding well dries up, there’s no reason for Senators like Snowe or Collins to obey the Minority Leadership.
The only thing keeping the Republicans together is the money spigot.
Zuzu's Petals
While your point about the structural deficit is well-taken, GOP foot-dragging holding up the budget is not an urban legend but a fact.
jibeaux
@BFR:
I meant more in the nature of turning them into Democrats, or Democrat-voting independents a la Jim Jeffords. From what I understand and for reasons I am unsure of, they seem to be very popular in Maine and I wouldn’t have any hopes of unseating them.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
That’s a pretty extreme hypothetical, do you have some psychic evidence to back it up?
Personally, I think it’s difficult to believe giving disproportionate influence to a party of anti-tax loons in the state govt has no effect on responsible budgeting. Granted, there are roles played by the initiative process and term limits, which make legislators afraid of messing with taxes in general, but it’s all due to the same cadre of people.
BFR
@Zifnab:
The people in the Senate will refuse to cede their individual power to hold up the legislature, thus leading to a steady decline in the power of the body.
That’s my theory at least.
jenniebee
What I don’t understand is why nobody’s talking about that “Nuclear Option” the last Republican Senate threatened to use if Democrats ever tried to filibuster anything the Republicans didn’t want killed anyway.
BFR
@jibeaux:
I don’t think that would change anything. Snowe as a democrat has the same incentives to maximize her leverage as she would as a republican.
Hob
I don’t understand the quoted bit about how the sight of a “genuinely popular” measure being thwarted by filibusters is supposed to make a difference. Plenty of things the public is behind already don’t get off the ground because of this – or get distorted beyond recognition during the bargaining – and it doesn’t get reported as “the filibuster killed the Puppies and Kittens Act,” but rather as “the Democrats can’t get the 60 Senate votes required to pass the PKA” (with the subtext of either “silly Democrats can’t get votes” or “guess it must not be so popular after all”). Or, “the Democrats finally have 60 votes for the controversial Ferrets, Hairballs, and No Abortions Act [formerly known as the PKA].”
stickler
Zifnab:
But that ignores the fact that guys like Vitter and Sessions ARE getting what they want: goodies in legislation (remember how many earmarks some of these bastards got attached to the defense bill, even though they turned around and voted against it anyway). Without having to give up the delay/filibuster/act-like-a-jackass routine. Until they have to pay a price for being obstructionists, they’ll keep on doing it.
danimal
@BFR:
I agree. I think the best argument for reforming the filibuster is that it is in the interests of the Senate itself. Institutional power will, in fact, drain away from the Senate if all legislation is blocked.
Napoleon
@BFR:
The theory is called “The Iron Law of Institutions”
Zifnab
@Roger Moore:
Well… mathematically speaking… it kinda is. By a factor of 1/15th (or roughly 6.66 Senators), if I’m not mistaken.
Zifnab
@stickler:
That’s true. And it’s a serious problem in the Senate. When you can have your cake and drink your Tea Party drinks too…
PeakVT
@Napoleon: The theory is called “The Iron Law of Institutions”
Nice. The theory explains why hippie-punching is so popular.
inkadu
@Roger Moore:
It’s a 1/15th difference. That’s something.
@BFR: I’m with you. This shit can not stand. We have no hope of gaining more senate seats than we have; Republicans aren’t going to become more moderate. The corporations aren’t going to abandon Washington or the press. This bill is not the beginning. It’s the end.
After 2010, bill after bill after bill is going to die in the Senate. Republicans will eventually take control again and continue to fuck the country in the ear. If a Democratic president is elected without the congress, he will be hamstrung by investigations if not impeached outright. If he has both houses, he will be filibustered to impotence.
This seems to be what the history has shown us. If there’s a flaw in my logic, please point it out.
How do you think the executive branch will be able to seize power? Is it going to be one of those barely-consitutional but still on-paper things, or is it going to be one of those “i’ll kill the family of any senator that votes against me” thing?
jibeaux
@BFR:
I certainly don’t think it’s going to happen. But if by some miracle we got one of them on board to vote for a cloture rules change, they wouldn’t have anything to gain by staying a Republican and would probably collect lots of nice goodies from Democrats.
But, realistically, I don’t see any way forward on this. If the Republicans had 60, I think cloture reform would have happened yesterday. It just isn’t feasible to keep a ten-seat majority, and they would have taken advantage of the rarity of the opportunity.
jibeaux
@danimal:
That’s an interesting angle. I, for one, fully support blocking any and all pet legislation of Lieberman and Nelson. I just could not support ending debate to proceed to a vote on something as controversial as the Connecticut Kitten and Orphan Protection Act, or the Nebraska Sunshine and Rainbows Act…
BFR
@jibeaux:
Frist tried to reform cloture over the judges, remember? Didn’t work. That’s where the whole “gang of 14” came into play, which I’m assuming means that there were at least 7 republicans who wanted to preserve cloture rules.
It’s not really about partisanship. If you strip away the party labels, you’re still left with a situation where the everyone who thinks they could be votes 51-60 on ANY important piece of legislation will vote to maintain cloture requirements. I’m guessing there aren’t even 30 votes in the Senate for reform.
Zifnab
@inkadu:
I’m still not sure how this will reflect positively on Republican candidates. When George Bush ran in 2000, he campaigned as a moderate. He supported social programs, so long as they were wrapped up in religion (see: Faith Based Initiatives). He supported tax cuts, but played up the Child Tax Credit and the student loan cuts as more socialist endeavors. Bush pushed Clean Skies and Healthy Forests legislation as environmentally friendly reforms. And he wanted to privatize social security because, officially, he wanted to save it. No Child Left Behind was supposed to fund education. The Iraq War media coverage highlighted all the charity work – schools, infrastructure, food distribution – done by the military and the contractors.
This country has a strong liberal streak that requires constant attention. The current crop of US Senators have abandoned that liberal streak entirely.
Perhaps 60 is the Democrat’s limit for Senate pickups. But 50 is looking to be the absolute upper bound for Republicans. I don’t see them retaking the Senate for a long time. The House is likewise a difficult beast to tame.
Republicans have mastered winning the White House for the majority of the last half century, but they’ve had a rough time taking and holding Congress. Now they’re off their game more than they’ve ever been this generation. If NY-23 is any indication, I don’t see why a Republican resurgence is really in the cards before 2016. The Tea Party pulls from the right and the general American middle ground pulls from the left. What is a Republican supposed to run on?
Brachiator
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
RE: Had budgets been allowed by a simple majority, California would be in exactly the same place, but just would have got there faster, since no politician is interested in addressing the structural deficit built into the California budget.
Don’t need a psychic. Facts will do nicely enough.
Back when Gray Davis was threatened with a recall he moved sharply to the left with new spending proposals. And budget proposals pushed by Democrats ever since have included increased spending and new state programs. Meanwhile, the non-partisan state legislative analyst has steadily and quietly pointed out the structural deficit built into the California budget.
There have been three budget deals in the last Sacramento go round, funded with tax increases and bonds. The most recent budget deal irresponsibly included some federal stimulus money, a one-time patch for a long-term problem.
Each has been blasted apart as actual revenues failed to match fantasy budget projections. Meanwhile in some local communities, the heavily regressive local sales tax is as high as 10.75 per cent, as unemployment continues at double digits.
Shorter: the California tax base is shrinking to a point where even steep tax increases cannot produce a balanced budget.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans in Sacramento are remotely interested in responsible budgeting. And the crap flows down to the local level, where, for example, a Los Angeles county supervisor insists on spending $700,000 for a vanity redecoration of his offices despite county budget squeezes (the supes get up to $1,000,000 each for discretionary spending and staff salaries).
Nonsense. There ain’t no fear here. The Legislators abuse the initiative process and use term limits for themselves and to select candidates for future office, freezing out progressives and independents who lack deep pockets.
The more appropriate federal analogy was pointed out on this weekend’s Bill Moyers Journal. Over $300 million poured out by the health and financial lobbies each as they work to guarantee that meaningful reform is prevented.
As always, it’s not just about votes and filibusters and procedures. Deadlock doesn’t come out of nowhere, and rarely out of ideological purity.
Follow the money.
Mike G
The problem is that 60 votes suddenly became a requirement for everything when the Dems took the majority, with filibustering or the threat of it being invoked on every single bill. How convenient for their corporate masters.
You know what might dissuade some of this shit? Making them actually filibuster. Harry “the Invertebrate” Reid doesn’t want to upset protocol at the senate tea party by making them actually filibuster — he backs down at the mere suggestion that it might happen. And why the hell Lieberman holds any committee position above coat-check boy is a contemptible disgrace.
Make these assholes stand there and read the phone book or recite nursery rhymes for two days straight every time they want to block legislation. After a few rounds of their bullshit, they’ll become fodder for late-night comedians, then objects of ridicule, followed by national disgust and anger.
Rick Taylor
__
Via Booman, every Republican in the house along with 39 Democrats voted to default on the national debt recently. And we needed every senator to prevent a filibuster against raising the debt limit.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab: @inkadu:
It’s still a stupid supermajority requirement that winds up giving an obstructionist minority excessive influence. It just happens that California is just short of a reliable 2/3 Democratic vote, and the US Senate is just short of a reliable 3/5 Democratic vote.
AhabTRuler
@Mike G: Linky linky. MikeJ was so kind as to provide enlightenment early on.
Brachiator
@Zuzu’s Petals:
The California tax revenue base is shrinking, because of the decline in the economy and the rise in unemployment, along with the steep decline in property values and the resulting decline in property tax assessments. Raising taxes on a smaller base gets you less revenues.
Imagine trying to pour water into a bucket with a hole in it. You can pour in more water (raise taxes), but until you fix the bucket (the structural deficit), you are not really solving anything.
In the last budget, a deal was struck to let all but 3 Republicans vote against the budget, insuring passage, but allowing the GOP to continue their big lie that they were holding the line on the budget.
Even though this back-room deal was revealed by one of the GOP legislators on LA Times reporter Patt Morrison’s NPR radio show, and subsequently confirmed by Sacramento political columnists, people keep pushing the lie that it’s only the 2/3 voting requirement keeping California voters from Budget Nirvana.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
One tiny problem here, Brachiator — the majority of those new, permanent spending increases came in the form of voter initiatives and were not voted in by the legislature. Our legislature is pretty broken, but they’re not the ones who decided that our three strikes law should permanently lock up guys who stole batteries or slices of pizza. The voters did.
The people of California want large amounts of government services but don’t want to have to pay for them, which is how we ended up in the disastrous mess we’re in today. And, yes, the Republicans are partially to blame for our budget mess since they were able to hold up the whole goddamned thing with the 3/5ths requirement until the Democrats broke down and agreed to finance the whole thing through budget cuts.
Mari
@Brachiator:
Please explain why increasing taxes is not a valid solution to a structural deficit.
“Structural deficit” just means that taxation revenues averaged out over the business cycle exceed expenditures over the same period. It’s not a magic phrase that makes all other budgetary planning meaningless.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Just not true. Some ballot initiatives have come from the legislature, but require voter approval. And it is typical but irresponsible for the legislator to pile on new spending on top of voter-originated initiatives without adjusting for the impact on the budget.
The impact on the budget of this stupid initiative just ain’t that big. And a reasonable initiative to reform 3 strikes was hijacked by a big spender who was looking to get a free pass for his jailed son, and was subsequently strongly opposed by liberals and conservatives, including presumptive gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.
Not true. And irrelevant even if it were true. Right now, today, there is no reasonable increase in taxes that can stem the projected $20 billion deficit for 2010/2011, without some major changes to the way that California does business.
The folly of blaming citizens can easily be seen at the local level. Parents pleaded with the LA School Board to shift money from building new schools to retaining teachers since school enrollment has been declining. Board officials told the parents to shut up. They wouldn’t even look for ways to get around regulations which require allocated bond revenues to be spent for school construction.
RSA
Getting rid of the filibuster kind of works against what I see as American political mythology: that less government is better government. A filibuster can be cast as preventing the government from doing something, and a lot of people, whether it’s to their benefit or not, think that’s a good thing, regardless of what the legislation actually deals with.
(A side point on California, I imagine you’ve heard as many people as I have say, “Let California go bankrupt.” My response of “But the size of California’s budget would rank it as the sixth largest economy in the world, if it were a country” would generally be met with a shrug. Some people don’t care about the big picture. See global climate change.)
Mnemosyne
Saying it’s not true doesn’t make it so. You can argue that the legislature has abdicated its responsibility by making the voters decide what the budget should be, but denying that a big part of the reason we’re in this hole is because the voters passed required spending through the initiative process is hiding your head in the sand.
You think that was the one-and-only stupid initiative that included required spending that passed? Not to mention that, yes, it did have a huge impact on our prison system, on overcrowding, on having to build more space to contain everyone. Ten billion dollars of our budget is tied up in the prison system. That’s more than the UC and CSU systems combined.
How is it irrelevant that voters want more services but scream if the legislature proposes raising taxes to pay for the services that they want? People in California seem to have some strange notion that bond money is free money that doesn’t cost anything in taxes and then they’re shocked and surprised when the bond measure they voted for actually makes their taxes go up. Well, duh.
And who voted for those bond measures? Did they just magically appear one day, or did voters vote them in without stopping to think about the budget impact of them?
You’re trying to completely let the voters off the hook in a state where direct democracy has been completely disastrous for our state. As I said, the legislature holds a huge amount of the blame because they’ve figured out that they can pass the tough decisions off to the initiative system, but the voters’ delusion that bond money is free money and that we can direct the spending of the state without worrying about where the money to do what we want will come from is a huge part of the problem.
Sasha
@jenniebee:
It’s called the Nuclear Option for a reason.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
In the first instance I was responding to someone’s claim that the problem was the 2/3 vote requirement for “spending bills.” It’s mostly not, in this case…at least in my view.
Of course tax increases are not the only solution. However, as to the source of revenues, there are taxes that are not strictly dependent on personal income or real property values, such as the VLF. You recall that Wilson cut the VLF during the ’90s boom, and the resulting state backfill amounted to a permanent $4-5 billion hole in the budget. Davis’ attempt to put the VLF back to its previous level helped get him recalled. Arnold foolishly campaigned on lowering the VLF and paid the price for years. It was only recently that the political will was found to raise the fee again.
With respect to the shrinking revenue base, I note that some of those same factors that you cite, such as unemployment, are also the cause of increased state spending.
Of course there are back-room deals. There are with every budget, and it’s no secret…it’s called the Big Five meeting. The fact that the GOP leadership eventually cuts a deal on the budget doesn’t change the fact that a minority of legislators hold it up more often than not. I don’t know who claims that passing a timely budget equals “budget nirvana” or even what that means.
AhabTRuler
Yes, but the collapse of our industrial (or, if you like, post-industrial) society would likely lead to a massive cutback in greenhouse gas emissions, so maybe they are cannier than you think.
Brachiator
@Mari:
California’s problem is exacerbated by the fact that the tax base is decreasing. You can raise taxes all you like, but if people lose jobs, move out of the state, see a decline in the value of their homes (reducing the property tax base), then the total available revenues subject to taxation declines, leaving you with less money.
Every recent budget has been blown apart because actual revenues have been less than what was projected, largely because the decline in the California economy has been worse than anyone cared to imagine.
Uh no. I provided a link earlier to the governor’s 2008 budget, which projected a $14.5 billion deficit. Now, there was a budget deal, with tax increases and budget gimmicks, which supposedly dealt with this. Unfortunately, after all the deals and compromises, California is looking at a potential deficit of $20 billion for 2010/2011, including revenue shortfalls for the previous period. Raising taxes again just to battle the deficit reduces money available for actual services. And does nothing for the next deficit.
Xenos
@RSA: From the vantage point of someone 3,000 miles away, whose state is suffering from the necessary budget cuts, what else is there to say but ‘let CA go bankrupt’? What short of bankruptcy will make the state restructure its finances and system of governance?
At a certain point Californians have to face their options, one of which is to go into receivership, or whatever it is when a state collapses and must be taken over by the Feds. The only model I can think of is Reconstruction. Seems a bit extreme to have soldiers come in and reestablish government, but at a certain point something has to be done. I bet it would piss BOB off to no end, which is something.
goblue72
@Brachiator:
Who cares who intitative a ballot proposition – the voters still have to VOTE on it. You could just as equally aruge that its irresponsible of voters to approve any new spending without adjusting for the impact on the budget. At the end of the day, its California voters tieing the legislatures hands far more than the other way around.
Which reform? – Proposition 36 PASSED in 2000- however it only addresses those caught by the Three Strikes law due to nonviolent drug possession. A helpful release valve, but not a complete solution. Over the last couple of decades, California’s prison population has increased seven-fold, far outstripping the rate of California’s general population growth over the same period. Our prisons are so overcrowded as to be criminal – and the federal courts have agreed, essentially finding that the over-stretched prison medical system was essentially killing prisoners. Meanwhile, the number of correctional officers has swelled, eating up an ever larger share of the state budget due to the sweetheart contracts they have ( and the only union it seems, that CA Republicans love).
I’m sorry – but how exactly is it “not true”. Do you have some magical republican unicorn that can sniff our voter’s intent? Personally, I prefer to look at what voters actually VOTE on to determine what they want. (I know, silly me.) It’s irrelevant if a proposition goes on the ballot because the legislature put it there instead of a voter-driven initiative – regardless of its source, the VOTERS still have to vote on it. And based on everything the California voters have approved over the last several decades, its pretty clear what voters want: (1) they don’t want to pay taxes, (2) they want to spend money, and (3) to spend that money without paying more taxes, they are willing to borrow it.
As for your ridiculous LA School system argument – (1) a group of parents complaining about something has squat to do with what actual voter intent was or what voters want – you know how we figure that out – WE LOOK AT ACUTAL ELECTION RESULTS!. and (2) the School Board probably told them to take a hike because there IS no way to spend school bond money for capital projects on operations/teacher salaries. Its against the California constitution and statutory law and every time a jurisdiction tries to do that, the courts slap them down and the locality winds up wasting a lot of money on legal fees pursuing a stupid idea.
Do you live in Orange County or something – its the only way I could possibly understand your behind the looking glass view of California politics.
AhabTRuler
Oh dear god, no, let this never be our standard!
goblue72
@Brachiator: I see – so in Brachiator land we should cut all of California’s taxes and then the magical unicorn pony will balance the budget.
inkadu
@Zifnab: Republicans can maintain their ‘roid rage because they are serving the interests of the plutocrats by limiting gov’t ability to break up their concentration of power. Solutions to our problems involve increasing the power of government. There will always be money against that position. Meanwhile, Republicans are locked in a suicidal culture war. Games work best if one side isn’t willing to lose just to make sure the other guy loses. Republican policies are a huge loss for everyone, but it doesn’t matter to the party of spite.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
A minor point. A ballot measure that comes from the Legislature is not an initiative measure. And the Legislature is limited on what it can put on the ballot … generally constitutional and initiative amendments, and bond measures.
Bond measures can be incredibly costly, but they typically provide for one-time funding of a project rather than a permanent spending increase.
Depends on how you define “big,” I guess. According to the State Auditor:
Well I suppose a few people could point out examples of initiatives that do require increased government services or oversight. But I think it’s also important to consider the ways in which the voters have arbitrarily capped revenue sources (Prop 13) or hamstrung the Legislature’s ability to allocate revenues (Prop 98).
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
It’s not a regulation. It’s in the state constitution. For instance:
(Blockquotes screwed up, sorry.)
Mnemosyne
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Exactly. California has surprisingly few options even if they did want to raise taxes. It’s pretty much sales tax and maybe income tax and that’s about it. That’s why we have about sixty bajillion bonds out there right now — there’s pretty much no other way for the state to raise money.
Tonal Crow
@Mnemosyne: Right. And using bonds instead of immediate tax increases to finance something more-or-less doubles its eventual cost. Yet it seems that the “pro” argument for every single bond measure contains the whopper “And this measure WILL NOT RAISE YOUR TAXES”. (screaming caps preserved).
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
In my mind one of the big problems with Prop 13 isn’t the 1+% cap on property tax, it’s the inability to adjust it to more accurately reflect the current assessed value of the property. Thus you have neighbors living in two identical houses paying sometimes wildly disparate amounts simply because they bought their houses in different years.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tonal Crow:
Yep, the ol’ hidden cost thing.
RSA
@Xenos:
I see I wasn’t considering the potential up-side.
ottercliff
My suggestion is a variant on the second option mentioned: “a popular, high-profile issue that gets blocked repeatedly by a 40-vote minority.”
Forget the “popular, high profile issue”. Force the Republicans to fillibuster EVERY issue. Before the mid term election the public just might come to the same conclusion they came to in 1994 – the GOP is run by empty suits and lunatics who should not be anywhere near the levers of power.
Brachiator
@Zuzu’s Petals:
The legislators have had 30 years to deal with Prop 13. And in the face of declining property values, even if Prop 13 were abolished outright, we would still have a budget problem. And people conveniently forget that Prop 13 came about because the state legislators refused to deal with the problem and let the issue fester to a voter-revolt boil.
Prop 98 and other initiatives which have hamstrung the state’s flexibility should be repealed. I don’t see anyone, Democrat or Republican, working on this. To the contrary, the Democrats invoke Prop 98 to justify tax increases which supposedly will benefit the schools.
And so it goes.
Tonal Crow
@Zuzu’s Petals: Yes. While there’s merit to helping longtime homeowners stay in their homes by keeping their property taxes from ballooning, that has to be balanced with the unfairness of sticking new homeowners with vastly-higher property taxes on basically-identical properties. The balance Also, Prop. 13 applies to business property, which is a scandal, since reassessment occurs only at sale, and it’s easy to disguise business property sales. See http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik13-2009jul13,0,6713365.column for details.
Brachiator
@goblue72:
Odd. I never called for a tax cut in any post in this thread. I pointed out that tax increases have not dented the California deficit or solved the budget problem.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
We were talking about the ways in which voters have affected state finance. Prop 13 is an example. It’s been tweaked a lot of different ways, but you are as aware as I am that the voters will only go for so much tweaking. Same with Prop 98.
Ruemara
I live in CA and work in gov. Everyone I ask about this has no solution. It’s very “pray for us” up here.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tonal Crow:
Yes, and the USSC upheld the Prop 13 reassessment scheme against an equal protection challenge long ago. Assuming Nordlinger is still dispositive, the state need only prove that the tax classification is not…well, insane. Not a high threshold, eh?
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
And your plan for how the legislators were supposed to alter the state constitution is … ?
Again, none of us is saying that the legislature has no responsibility for the mess we’re in. In fact, we’re in the mess that we’re in because they ducked their responsibilities and pushed everything off onto the voters. That doesn’t absolve the voters of responsibility for their conviction that they could have lots of government services and someone else would pick up the bill.
Tonal Crow
@Zuzu’s Petals: That’s the “rational basis test” for ‘ya.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tonal Crow:
Yep. A financial interest – despite Thomas’ recent grumblings to the contrary – just doesn’t qualify as a fundamental right.
martha
DougJ: LOVE the title of this post…Joan Didion is quite remarkable and her essays truly do capture California and the central valley of that remarkable, screwed up state.
neal peart
If it can happen there, it can happen at the national level, not with IOUs per se, but with even more catastrophic results.Pretty much.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
Another point. Legislators have, as an example, been trying to introduce split roll measures for years. According to the state Board of Equalization [pdf link], it would increase revenues by approximately $9.1 billion per year; even with a 30% decline in market value, revenues would increase by about $2.1 billion per year.
We would still have a budget problem if we eliminated every state employee’s job. So what?
Darkrose
I just want to say that I love the title of this post. I’d totally want this to be the title of my autobiography, if I ever had one. Which I won’t.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne:
Sheesh. I’ve always heard the thing about CA spending more on prisons than on higher education, but I didn’t have a sense of the scale.
Someone should make the prison guards’ union take furlough days.
Zuzu's Petals
@Darkrose:
Another way to think about it:
Of course it’s not a very helpful comparison. After all, the state isn’t paying to feed, clothe, guard, rehabilitate, and provide medical services to students 365 days a year. And prisons aren’t collecting fees from the prisoners.
Marshall
What I would do with the filibuster is to make them real again. The current “virtual” filibusters are manifestly too easy. If some individual senator wants to block legislation, make them recite the phone book overnight. It would still happen, but it would not be used casually.