Liberals Are Hurting California, Former Assemblyman Tells Loma Linda/Redlands Tea Partiers

During a recent general meeting of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots at a local restaurant, the group’s members, which come from the immediate area, wanted to know just how bad situation was from former State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

His answer: Bad.

“If (an update) doesn’t cause you run screaming, I don’t know what will,” DeVore told the crowd.

Below is a partial transcript of the night’s discussion. The rest of the transcript will run tomorrow.

We had a golden opportunity during that recall (of Gray Davis) to get some fiscal discipline in that office. We thought, the people here in California, we thought it might have been Arnold ‘let’s cut up the credit cards’ Schwarzenegger.

What ended up happening is you had a governor who had no practical experience in government who began to utter things like bonds are a gift from the future.

It’s like excuse me? A gift from the future? You mean you’re burdening my children and my grandchildren. What you’re doing is enslaving our future to pay off those bonds.

When you have that sort of an attitude, when you have a governor who lurches to the left and lurches to the right and thinks that somehow lurching back and forth and being erratic is somehow governing from the center, it is not too much of a shock to understand what that at the end of his reign, California had more debt than ever.

ON THE BUDGET

It should come as no surprise to any of us that the deficit that Governor Brown faces, about $25 billion when he came into office. (That’s) the 18-month estimate.

You know that we passed two very interesting propositions last November. Prop 25 and 26.

Twenty-five is the proposition that says we only need to have a simple majority now to pass a budget in Sacramento. You always heard the left in California bemoan the fact that (we’re) the only state that not only required a two-thirds vote to raise taxes but also a two-thirds vote to pass the budget.

And so Prop. 25 said never more are we going to have these late budgets.

So what does the legislature do? Of course, they pass a budget on time. One of the reasons they wanted to pass it on time is because when the budget isn’t passed on time, the lawmakers are the first government employees not to get paid.

So there is a certain incentive to get it passed on time. But what they passed was a budget that only cut, on paper, about $14 and a half billion dollars of that $25 billion deficit.

And then, if you started to look at that $14 and a half billion, what you saw was that half of that was a real reduction in spending and that the other half were fund shifts and gimmicks in reductions and increases.

So you could argue that half of the supposedly draconian cuts weren’t really cuts at all. And in fact we have not seen any real substantive reform pass yet out of the legislature.

You have one reform idea from Governor Brown that I have to agree with -- dealing with redevelopment agencies, but it’s been hung up as one would expect because those are very powerful agencies with billions and billions of dollars at their disposal.

So you haven’t seen any real reform. You see this budget passed on time, but not the taxes that the governor so disparately wants. No taxes yet. And he needs the taxes to close the rest of his deficit.

So you see the governor going around the state on these tax tours, and dog and pony shows, trying to convince people that they need to raise taxes on themselves or we’re going to see some terrible cuts in the state of California.

Well that brings up Prop. 26. Prop. 26 passed as well. It was a proposition I supported. Prop. 26 said that no longer can your legislature raise taxes with a simple majority vote and disguise those taxes as fees.

ON PUTTING THE 2009 TAX INCREASES BACK ON THE BALLOTS

DeVore said Brown is looking to put that extension back on the ballot as soon as possible and needs a handful of Republicans to put that tax increase back on the ballot ASAP.

He would like to have that increase back on the ballot because he promised during his campaign that there would be no tax increases (leaning into the microphone) without a vote of the people.

Remember that? During his ads? No tax increases (leaning into the microphone) without a vote of the people. You always heard that little asterisk during his ads.

If he has a tax increase, he wants you all to vote on it. And he’s confident that with all of the money that the unions are going to spend to convince you that it’s a good idea, that maybe this time it’ll pass.

If it doesn’t, you can be sure that the kinds of cuts that they are going to make in government services are going to be the kinds of cuts that hurt you the most - and cause the most travail and the most anger in California because heaven forbid that they actually reform government.

What they want is to have you feel the pain, so that they can come back and ask you again and ask you for another tax increase a few months later and you’ll give up and you’ll vote for it.

So that’s what’s occurring right now in Sacramento. This is a big, big deal because if the Republicans hold firm and don’t provide the votes for Jerry Brown, his only other option is to ask his allies in the public sector employee unions to circulate petitions to put it on the ballot. And that will take time and take about $2 million of their money or union dues money. I guess it’s not union boss money. It’s the members of the union’s money.

And so that’s the Plan B that governor Brown has to try to raise taxes on Californians. That’s what’s at stake right now.

AS TO WHETHER THERE ARE TERMED OUT REPUBLICANS WHO MIGHT HELP BROWN PASS THE TAX HIKES

You need them in both houses. You need them in both the senate and the assembly. Here’s the challenge, this is the law of unintended consequences - my favorite law in politics - that has probably saved us from a tax increase - the independent redistricting committee.

You ask, how will that affect anything? Well let me tell you how it affects you. Your representatives are no longer choosing their own districts. And so if you are a termed out state assemblyman and you would like to stay in office, your only chance is to run for the state senate. And you won’t know what those districts look like until December.

And so what’s happening, that there are lawmakers who I think will vote for a tax increase, but they would also like to still be lawmakers. And they’re looking at these districts and they’re saying I don’t know if my district is going to be conservative, moderate, left of center, I have no idea because you have an independent commission doing it that they have no control over. And so that independent commission is inadvertently or unintentionally saving us from a potential vote to raise taxes or to put a tax increase on the ballot where I would hope that Californians would vote no.

He said he knew of no members in the state assembly that would cave and you need both, he said.

ON THE QUESTION OF WHY CALIFORNIA IS UNFRIENDLY TO SMALL BUSINESS AND WHAT THE VISION FOR THE STATE IS.

The folks in Sacramento have convinced themselves through their own force of will that California is such a beautiful state, such a wonderful coastline, great weather wonderful colleges and hard working people that businesses will want to be here. They’ve convinced themselves of this.

Whatever statistics you show them - they just say, well that’s not true, that’s a lie. Why then do we have so many businesses still here? Then if you bring up taxes they ask, why are you trying to race to the bottom? Look at all the problems in Texas (which has no state income tax). Our schools are better, they claim, our colleges are better. We have a better social safety net. It’s terrible to be poor in Texas. You know, why do you hate poor people? So they come up with all these excuses. Of course, none of which solve the problem.

It’s just like the story of the frog and the scorpion. They're scorpions, it’s in their nature. They can’t help but to increase the regulatory burden and the tax burden. And the sad thing is that big business in California, and you may find this as a surprise or maybe some of you will, we know that labor gives to Democrats, government labor gives almost exclusively to Democrats, but did you know that big business give almost mainly to Democrats in California? And they do so because they have the power. And their attitude is, “We’re going to feed the alligator so the alligator eats me last. That’s why they do it."

And so if you’re a principal conservative in this state, you don’t get a lot of money from the special interests from the PACs. You have to raise money the hard way from actual tax paying voters asking people for their $1,500 contributions. So we’re typically outgunned.

It seems to me that this state has to hit bottom, hard, before these people figure it out. Because I just don’t see them figuring it out. I had a brief hope that Governor Brown might have a Nixon-go-to-China moment and might be able to steer a course of moderation, perhaps even be a better governor than the disaster that was (Arnold) Schwarzenegger, but I’m not seeing that right now.

It seems to me that he’s hell bent to be the liberal that we expected him to be. I wish I had some good news about that. But you’re dealing with people who have a completely different conception of the free market and capitalism and the impact of regulations and taxes. They just don’t get it.

Come back tomorrow for more of the transcript.