CSUN University News Clippings

Commentary: Is Schwarzenegger serious, or playing chess?

(June 3, 2009)

By Dan Walters

Reflecting – even befitting – someone who conquered the image-obsessed worlds of bodybuilding and movies before turning to politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship has been marked by countless changes of persona and position.

The governor who declared just months ago that anyone believing the budget could be balanced without new taxes “has a math problem” reverted Tuesday to the governor who came into office proposing to slash spending and “blow up the boxes” of government.

“California’s day of reckoning is here,” Schwarzenegger told legislators during an unusual joint session, demanding rapid action on tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts, including the elimination of welfare grants and health care for children.

“The immediate task before us is to cut spending to the money available to us,” he said, as he ticked off the specifics and added, “It’s an awful feeling, but we have no choice. Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed and our credit is dried up … If we don’t act, the state will simply run out of money and go insolvent.”

Those are harsh words, certainly, but they reflect a dismal economic and fiscal plight. And yet, because Schwarzenegger has been so inconsistent on the budget for five-plus years, no one other than himself knows whether it’s steely resolve to close the deficit with spending cuts regardless of the pain, as he says, or another gambit in the political chess game.

His new words are not being taken at face value because his past words have been so lacking in permanence or meaning. While Democrats wonder whether he is, truly, telling them that cuts are the only way out, thus forcing them to do things that they consider to be abhorrent, such as eliminating welfare, Republicans wonder whether he’s painting a dark picture to induce them, for the second time this year, to enact some additional taxes.

A handful of Republicans voted for taxes in February, costing the Legislature’s two GOP leaders their positions and making others the objects of recall campaigns. Even so, the new revenue fell well short of closing the gap when voters rejected part of the package in May and the ever-deteriorating economy drove tax receipts downward.

The current estimate is that the state faces a $24-plus billion deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year that begins July 1 as well as a looming cash crisis that can be relieved only by short-term loans that cannot be obtained unless the Legislature acts quickly to balance the budget. However, looming over the current crisis is the same political angst that accompanied February’s landmark adoption of new taxes.

Republicans walked the political plank for taxes only to see the deficit balloon again. If Democrats now swallow hard and agree to seemingly unthinkable cuts in education, health and welfare, will that be enough? Or will the economy, which has yet to hit bottom, continue to create new deficits that require even more draconian measures?

Publication: Sacramento Bee