Voters knew what they were doing
Three weeks after Californians resoundingly defeated five budget-bridging propositions, forcing leaders across the state to realistically ponder brutal cuts in every public service and program imaginable, the state's largest union is trying to convince us that the voters didn't really mean it. Oh, the union acknowledges, they meant to cast all of those "no" votes all right -- but voters weren't necessarily implying that they would refuse to accept additional taxes. Well, we've got news for the SEIU: Yes they were.
The vast majority were, anyway. A sizable portion of voters might eventually regret those "no" votes, now that it seems likely that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't bluffing about cuts that must have seemed inconceivable prior to the May 19 vote.
But the fact is, the Legislature couldn't do its job, so the voters did it for them. Yes, the Legislature is eminently more qualified to comprehend what $24 billion in cuts will mean to schools and law enforcement and the disabled, but they abandoned their responsibility, assigning California's fiscal stability to an electorate as fed up with legislative incompetence as it is with rising taxes and perceived wastefulness.
Those "no" votes might have meant different things (or a multitude of things) to different voters, but one message seems to have been universal: Too many taxes, too much spending. So this is what we have: A fiscally devastated state, and an overwhelming mandate to fix things by essentially tearing them down first.
The Service Employees International Union, whose vast membership ranges from health care professionals to state employees, has launched a $1 million TV ad campaign to convince Schwarzenegger, the Legislature and the rest of us that voters meant something else entirely, and that the way to solve the state's budget crisis is through both spending cuts and new taxes. That would in fact have been the best approach -- it's what this newspaper recommended -- but that's not what voters decided.
Schwarzenegger told the Legislature June 2 that the message was "clear" in voters' rejection of the five propositions. "Do your job," the governor said. "Don't come to us with these complex issues. Live within your means. Get rid of the waste and inefficiencies. And don't raise taxes."
If voters didn't understand or didn't care they were cutting programs for children, the poor, the elderly and the disabled, it's because the Legislature has failed them in so many ways -- with wastefulness perhaps highest on the list. And how does one curb wastefulness? At some point, by removing the feeding tube.
As much as it might hurt.
