Villines Out, Slash and Burn In

California State Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines resigned his post yesterday and will be replaced by Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo effective June 1. Villines wrote his GOP political epitaph by agreeing to the budget compromise with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats in February that broke an eight-month impasse. You can read the Fresno Bee story on it here.

Staying true to form, the heavy majority of Republicans would rather shut down the state and gut its economy than settle for less than their entire way on anything. So Villines is out. Villines hails from Clovis, a wealthy suburb of Fresno and a place where Republican candidates typically come to pad their war chests at campaign time. His apostasy came from his realization that, in his own words,

There's no doubt about it - the budget we passed was a compromise in every sense of the word. It included many things that were abhorrent to Democrats and Republicans. For me, I profoundly disagreed with the taxes.

But the consequences of not passing this budget compromise were significant. Californians would go without over a billion dollars in tax refunds for the foreseeable future, our credit rating would drop to junk bond status increasing borrowing costs, counties and small businesses that work for the state would go unpaid, forcing many to declare bankruptcy and triggering mass layoffs. Not to mention the loss of services to seniors, children and those with special needs

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You can read his entire statement on the compromise here.

The compromise includes $15 billion in cuts and $12 billion in tax increases to solve most of a projected $42 billion budget shortfall. The rest is to come from borrowing against future state lottery revenues, the federal stimulus and a couple of other fixes. Democrats hated the cuts as much as Republicans hated the tax hikes, but the leaders of the respective parties finally came to the rational conclusion that both sides would have to give some to close such a huge gap. The fact that Republican legislators had any say at all in the matter only owes to California's idiotic 2/3 requirement to pass a budget. The GOP holds only 29 seats in the 80-member Assembly and 15 in the 40-member Senate.

Senate Democratic leader Darell Steinberg said Villines, "courageously transcended party politics to do what was right for the state during a true economic crisis." But Villines was roasted in Republican circles and in the conservative blogosphere for deviating from the ideological line. Jon Fleischman's FlashPoint conservative blog, for instance, said, "He damaged the brand name of Republicans and he made it very difficult to say we are the party of lower taxes." These folks place rigid obeisance to ideological orthodoxy over any practical consideration whatever. They seem to have no awareness that even their icon Ronald Reagan agreed to a hefty tax hike in California as governor and another on Social Security as president when the books couldn't be balanced any other way.

It seems the proponents of slash and burn governance are about to get their way, too. The ballot Propositions necessary to activate the compromise all appear heading to defeat, according to a poll done by the Public Policy Institute of California. Read a complete article on that here. With Republicans angry at the tax hikes and Democrats upset over the cuts, the compromise settlement is in real jeopardy of being rejected by the voters. If that happens, does anyone think Villines, fellow Republican Assemblymen Roger Niello and Anthony Adams, and Senators Dave Cogdill and Roy Ashburn, who have all been raked over the coals for supporting the compromise last time, will be more amenable to compromise next time around?

Not bloody likely. Instead, what we're likely to see is a government shutdown, the layoffs of tens of thousands of state and local workers and the cancellation of state projects resulting in layoffs for tens of thousands more in the private sector as well. This is precisely what the economy does not need during a recession. The Titanic may be going down, but the band plays on and the deck chairs are nicely arranged.