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January 06, 2004

Arnold Shows Big-Time Leadership.

The past few days the drumbeat has been building. Schwarzenegger’s budget is due. He promised not to raise taxes, so he’ll have to make cuts. And the media was waiting to pounce on him for making those cuts:

Barring a tax increase, Schwarzenegger will have no choice but to propose deep and broad-based spending cuts that may clash with his own values if he is committed to balancing the budget, lawmakers and financial experts said.

“Whatever decision he makes, it’s going to have a human impact,” said state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier). “He has to weigh what his bottom line is in terms of how much human pain to impose. And I don’t frankly see how he can get out of it whether it’s the developmentally disabled or poor children who need health care or middle-class children who want to go on to higher education. There’s going to be pain.”

If Schwarzenegger relents and raises taxes, he risks alienating his base of Republican voters. Some are already unnerved by a comment that signaled flexibility on the question. Were voters to show an appetite for new taxes, the governor said at a news conference, he would be inclined to listen.

Lo and behold, what do we see today? Once again Schwarzenegger has outflanked and surprised everybody, by getting the California Teacher’s Association to back him on $2 billion in budget cuts.

SACRAMENTO With the support of California’s largest teacher’s union, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to propose cutting at least $2 billion in education spending when he presents his first state budget Friday.

After closed-door negotiations with the governor’s staff, leaders of the California Teacher’s Assn. agreed to back an assortment of temporary education cuts the details of which remain sketchy in return for Schwarzenegger’s pledge not to tinker with Proposition 98, according to officials close to the talks. Proposition 98 is a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that K-12 schools and community colleges annually receive an increasing stream of money from the state’s general fund.

The union support could take significant political pressure off Schwarzenegger, who promised during his election campaign not to cut education in the course of resolving the state’s $14-billion budget deficit.

Budget analysts were anticipating that the governor would do battle with the education community over his insistence on closing the deficit without any new taxes. But educators said privately Monday that with schools accounting for about 40% of the budget, $2 billion in temporary cuts seem manageable. They had been bracing for much worse, alarmed by recent comments from the governor that a suspension of Proposition 98 might be necessary to rein in what he characterizes as out-of-control spending.

That’s leadership.