I didn’t like the headline in the Sacramento Bee this morning which reads “Budget Plan Voted Down: a Democratic proposal without tax hikes fails to entice GOP as — no surprise — a deadline passes” (the link above to the Bee story on-line has a different headline, but it’s the same story).
The headline should have been “Republicans delay timely fair budget for ___ year in a row.” Look, it may be old news to Sacramento insiders, but it’s not well known to the public: because we are one of the only states in the country to require a 2/3rd vote to pass a budget, the people we elected to be the majority in the California legislature can’t get a budget passed without getting a handful of radical rightwing Republicans to vote for it.
Because the Republicans are in the minority and their only power comes from their ability to block a budget and extract budget-busting pork projects for their district, they block it every year. This should be reported as such: Republicans block and delay the budget, Democrats don’t.