Schwarzenegger Vetoes Budget

This was kind of a no-brainer for the Governor. While his popularity has stumbled during the budget crisis, the legislature is worse, and the early reviews of the budget are very negative. By vetoing it, Arnold sets himself apart from the failed budget process and gets to say that "I did all I could" when he is inevitably overridden.

A budget veto would be a first for California, but legislative leaders in both parties said early this morning that it is likely the Legislature would override it.

"I'm pretty confident we are not going to have any difficulty" overriding a veto, said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles). "We would do it in rapid fire."

The last bill override was in 1979, when Jerry Brown was governor (the bills concerned state employees and insurance).

That last bit of information should tell you all you need to know about the dysfunctional state political system. No veto overrides in 30 years? What a farce.

Now, the flip side to this political move by the Governor is that he will be shown to have essentially no power in Sacramento. He's been completely divorced from the Yacht Party, having no ability to move them on any significant issue. And now the budget will be passed over his veto (I'm guessing this eliminates his ability to blue-pencil anything out of it, too). Schwarzenegger's power is at its lowest ebb now.

But he's playing a post-partisan game, and he'll hope to regain some of that relevancy with the presumed March '09 special election. Wherein there will be no talk of the slashing of the vehicle license fee which contributed mightily to this mess, of course.

...adding, there's one other wrinkle to this, and that's this:

If lawmakers vote to override the veto, Schwarzenegger said, he will veto all the bills awaiting action on his desk.

This gives a measure of leverage to the Governor, but it looks to me like he's learned from his Republican friends how to hijack.

UPDATE: Karen Bass' statement is here.

They were only some of the victims of a chronic budget problem in California that has been going on for decades. Over the past few months it became clear that California’s chronic budget problems couldn’t be resolved in a single session of the legislature. Not when we have a 2/3 requirement to pass a budget and raise revenues - a disastrous tyranny of the minority that other states have sensibly avoided. Not when we have a revenue system based on what made sense in the 1930s - a system that careens from year to year with no long term stability.”

If the people of California are the victims in the chronic budget crisis, the 2/3 vote and the outdated revenue system are the villains. Because of the two thirds vote requirement when legislative Democrats made cuts and supported taxes-- and when the governor made cuts and supported taxes—a small Republican minority was still able to hold the budget hostage for almost three months.”

If Governor Schwarzenegger had been able to convince even a handful of legislators from his party to support a budget – AS EVERY OTHER GOVERNOR IN HISTORY HAS BEEN ABLE TO DO – we wouldn’t be in this situation. But Governor Schwarzenegger was not able to produce a single vote -- and the people of California were hurting -- so we stepped in to pass a compromise budget that, while ugly in many aspects, at least buys us time to make progress on the real reforms we need.

I think she's interested in changing the 2/3 requirement.