Let me pose a thought experiment to you: Suppose you are atravelling salesman and you knock on someone's door expecting to sell them woolsocks. This person, upon seeing your socks, joyfully invites you into theirhome and pays you handsomely for the socks. Still, you decide to mix it up alittle bit before next year, so you show up at their door waving cotton socks.They slam the door in your face, claiming they're allergic to cotton. Now, theyear is up, and you have another opportunity to sell them socks. Are you goingto try to sell them wool or cotton?
Anyone with even the barest capacity to learn from their mistakes already knowsthe answer to this question: you sell the customers what they want, and if youcan, try to pawn off the bad products some other way (maybe the government willbail you out).
However, Gov. Schwarzenegger appears to be under theimpression that after being rejected once for putting conservative ballotmeasures on a California specialelection ballot, the answer is now to do the same thing again.Schwarzenegger has three things in common with Ronald Reagan: they were both governor of California, they both raised taxes during a recession,and they both were optimists. That said, even the great exponent of"Morning in America"was never optimistic to the point of naivete, unlike the Governator.
And not only is the Governator repeating his mistake, but he's potentiallyundoing his success. The Los Angeles Times reportsthat Schwarzenegger has decided to call another specialelection (apparently the disastrous one in 2005 wasn't enough), this time toask California's people to givehis budget compromise the green light themselves. Once again, those who hadplaced tentative faith in Schwarzenegger's ability to learn from his mistakesseem to be forced to ask how they could have been wrong again.
Among the budget items up for vote in this special election are extendedtemporary tax increases, voluntary restrictions on spending, borrowing againstthe state lottery, shifting money from preschools and mentally ill facilities toundisclosed locations and punishing elected officials for deficits. In otherwords, this is a veritable grab bag of old-fashioned fiscal conservatism of thekind Reagan, Pete Wilson and Schwarzenegger at least rhetorically endorsed. AndSchwarzenegger expects Californiavoters to go for it.
Excuse me, governor, but let's recap the evidence about Californiavoters. California is a statethat threw your predecessor out of office and replaced him with an actor because he threatened to raise vehicle licensing fees. Californiais a state that has had constitutional limits on tax increases for thirtyyears. And you expect Californians to voluntarily accept "temporary" taxhikes?
California is a state thathas 800,000 more people on welfare than the rest of the country. Californiais a state where all the spending measures on the ballot passed in the lastelection. Do you expect Californians to accept voluntary restrictions onspending?
California is a statethat spends 40 percent of its budget on education. Californiais a state where lawsuits come up asking for more elbow room in prisons. Now you're expecting Californians to voluntarily forego funding for children and thementally ill?
On second thought, that last idea is the most absurd of thelot. After all, California'slegislators do have a tendency to act like children, and with this absurdlyoptimistic gamble, the governor might just be exhibiting signs of cracking.Still, one has to agree with his message -- that Californiashould stop throwing money at these people.