No Time to be an Incumbent

If the money, more of it, again, doesn’t come from Congress to make our state budget whole, will the governor call a special session and when?  As anyone who reads this blog knows, if she doesn’t call a special session, and if she wants to balance the fiscal hole, she has two options:

1. Cut 3-5% across the board, or
2. Oh, there is no other legal option -- the budget must be “balanced.” (Of course it was supposed to be balanced when they passed it in 2009, and it was supposed to be balanced again last spring.)

An across the board cut at this stage is, by most arguments, a little severe. Even if you don’t agree they have cut enough, and we don’t, they have cut a lot – and a fixed-percentage cut across the board will hit some undeserving programs harder than others.

If she calls a special session, the subplots are interesting. First question is when? The logic for a fast call and a short session goes something like this. If the Legislature is called upon, and it does cut selected programs, it could be a signal to the general public that visible, humanitarian programs are actually out of money. This is the old “put seniors out in the street” mantra. This strategy has a secondary benefit to those who want more money, higher taxes, for more government. It could play well in the November elections when voters are deciding whether to make it more difficult to raise taxes (reinstating the 2/3 vote requirement), or taking whatever profit there is in liquor sales and turning it over to private vendors, or determining if we keep the sales tax on pop, beer and candy.

Would they be that devious, that calculating?  Causing severe problems just to kill tax-cutting free-enterprise initiatives? Of course not!

But no matter what comes out of any special session, it will be no good for incumbents.  They will return to their districts with the message that they have raised taxes, again, or cut what some surely will think are vital services. And no, you don’t go doorbelling outside of Seattle and talk about raising taxes.

So the loyal opposition can snicker if they want, but as a veteran of summer doorbelling and legislative campaigns, I tell you this is very close to a lose/lose for the governor. She is in a pickle, rock-and-hard-spot, zero-sum game. Or, as my grandpa Harry used to say it’s a pick between, “summer in Little Rock, or winter in Fargo.”  I never understood it either, but we all knew it meant there was not a good choice.