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Saturday, April 21, 2007
GOP’s bizarre budget flop goes down in history
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Republicans were dedicated to giving voters reason to throw them out of office, they succeed marvelously in this year’s legislative session.
Even granting newcomers a learning curve, this session of the Georgia General Assembly will go down as one of the most bizarre in modern times. It was, to borrow a lobbyist’s phrase, “chaos in search of frenzy.” There were no winners — except, perhaps, Democrats who as the minority party are achieving something that has eluded them for the past decade or more. That remarkable achievement is either the imposed or the self-regulated silencing of the fringe rhetoric that made the Georgia party indistinguishable from its national leadership.
To their credit, they’ve largely kept their mouths shut when they should, appeared reasonable when necessary, and have generally avoided missteps.
Pray tell, then, what were Republicans thinking?
Minutes after the Georgia House overrode Gov. Sonny Perdue’s veto of the supplemental budget by a surprisingly large and bipartisan margin, 163-5, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans), said of Perdue: “If he had been involved three or four weeks ago, we would not be at this point.”
On the evening of the 39th day of a 40-day session, Perdue vetoed the budget that fleshes out spending for the current year, the one that provides money to local school systems according to final enrollment numbers. That budget also, this year, provided $142 million in tax relief to property owners. “I’m afraid politics got in the way of doing the right thing,” Perdue said in vetoing the bill. “I believe the House and Senate got into a bit of a brawl and realized too late that they were nearly out of time and had to come up with a compromise quickly. … Unfortunately the late-night quick fix they came up with was the wrong solution for Georgia.”
It did not, he argued, provide enough money for various programs.
Within hours, in dramatic fashion, the House — Democrats and Republicans alike — overrode the veto. It was one of those rare moments in legislative proceedings where principle triumphs. House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) reminded legislators that until 1966 the governor chose the speaker and committee chairmen. Former Gov. Lester Maddox gave up that power in return for the governorship after a write-in campaign kept either Maddox or Republican Bo Callaway from winning a majority, thereby throwing the decision to the House.
Leaders of both parties argued that the independence of the House required the veto override.
On important occasions in times of stress, a hush does fall over legislative bodies, members become attentive, and speakers are rarely more eloquent than when arguing in defense of principle. The Huose override came quickly and decisively.
Who wins? Nobody. Certainly not Richardson or other House leaders, who did the right thing in returning excess money to taxpayers, though they framed it as a dare. Certainly not Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or other Senate leaders, who also did the right thing in stripping “pork” from the House appropriations bill, but in a way that came across as political opportunism and the far too early start to the 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
Certainly not, either, the governor, who intervened far too late in a way that failed to distinguish himself from his Democratic predecessors, blaming legislators for providing too little money for this and that.
“This was not a matter of miscommunication,” said Harbin later. “There was no communication. Nobody has ever communicated ‘we want to go another way.’”
So we have here two budgets, one the supplemental for the current year and another a $20.2 billion budget for next year that involves spending $1.6 billion more. Neither is austere. Neither, with the exception of a tax rebate, would represent any important distinction between this party and the last one in power. And even the property tax rebates, while symbolically important, come with new borrowings — meaning, of course, that cash out is replaced by debt.
We have, too, the party in power that professes conservatism as its foundation. If conservatives agree on principles, then surely they can agree on pork, on borrowing, or spending limits, and on giving back to taxpayers the excess inappropriately collected.
They can, yes. If they talk. And if they leave ambitions for higher office out of the public’s business.
Who won this year? Nobody, except perhaps the not-seen and not-heard Democrats.
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