”
No new taxes:
”
it’s a promise every Republican politician makes and brags about
keeping.
“No new taxes:” it’s a promise every Republican politician makes and brags about keeping.
But even when they say they’re keeping the promise, some don’t. Few are as open about reneging on the pledge as former President George H.W. Bush was in 1989, when he okayed a tax increase labeled as such – and was ousted three years later in part because he broke the promise that was the key point of his acceptance speech at the previous year’s party convention.
So it is today with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who likes to talk about “political courage” as he proposes budgets that impose expense after expense on people and institutions that are not among his major supporters.
Yes, there are no new taxes in the Schwarzenegger’s proposed 2005-06 state budget for either businesses or individuals in the higher tax brackets. There is also nothing formally called a tax increase for anyone else. But for those in the lower and middle income brackets, there are plenty of de facto new taxes.
A few examples:
n If this budget plan passes, Medi-Cal recipients will have to pay monthly fees for the first time. Schwarzenegger and his aides may not call this a new tax, but if a tax is something people must pay to government, like it or not, this surely is one.
n Students at the University of California and on Cal State campuses will be paying 8 percent more next year than they do now, and they’re already paying about 10 percent more than last year. Not a tax, according to the Schwarzenegger reasoning, because no one has to get a college degree. But reality is that those who don’t get degrees spend their lifetimes in the back of the economic bus, so this fee increase in real life also is a tax on students and their families.
 n Schoolteachers will likely be asked to pay far higher contributions to their pension funds than they ever did before. Again, it’s not classed as a formal tax even though all teachers will be paying extra.
And that doesn’t even mention the classes many school districts will have to drop because Schwarzenegger failed to keep his solemn promise of last spring never to dip into the money they are “guaranteed” by the 1988 Proposition 98. He deprived them of $2 billion last year and plans to take another $2.2 billion this year. Do lost classes equal a tax? Yes, if they force parents to pay extra for private instruction for things like driver training or impel them to switch their kids to private schools.
So the Schwarzenegger promise to schools was worth even less than his rhetoric about never raising taxes. For a broken promise is a broken promise, even if one side claims it wasn’t a promise because it didn’t take the form of a written contract. And a new tax is a new tax, even if the state budget doesn’t use the term.
Which means Schwarzenegger’s credibility is suddenly at issue, more than questions about whether any new fee or cut in service amounts to a new tax.
Much of the governor’s appeal has been to public trust. He calls himself the “people’s governor,” but in his budget directly and deliberately seeks to thwart the will of the people, who passed Proposition 98 by a 55-45 percent margin and likely would do so again today.
Trust me, he says, never to impose new taxes. And then he does, without calling them that. Trust me, he tells educators, never to dip into your funds again. And then he does. Trust me, he told reporters last year, never to use gimmicks and borrowing to balance the budget. And then he proposes borrowing at least $3 billion this time around. Trust me, he said, to hire a private detective to investigate my behavior toward women who claim I groped them. And then he forgets about it. Trust me, he said, never to have to take campaign donations from anyone. And then he sets records for taking donations in his first year as governor.
Trust me, he steadfastly says, “No one can buy me.” No campaign donor gets anything in return, he maintains. But a large percentage of his donations come from the state Chamber of Commerce and its corporate members – and the chamber got its entire wish list when it came time for Schwarzenegger to sign bills into law last fall.
This last is the most important promise of all. Schwarzenegger is governor today primarily because predecessor Gray Davis was perceived by voters as corrupted by the campaign dollars he constantly raised. If the public perception of Schwarzenegger shifts in the same direction, the vast reservoir of goodwill he enjoys will evaporate and the governator could turn out to be only a short-term phenomenon.
