Schwarzenegger's Fiscal Turn
For as long as I can remember, Tom McClintock has been the one true budget hawk in California state government. He's a politico, but he's first and foremost a policy wonk, which means that implementing policy is more important than personally holding office. The SacBee's Dan Weintraub says Governator's State of the State speech is channeling McClintock, Arnold's erstwhile (rather friendly) opponent:
For the next year, McClintock watched from the Senate as Schwarzenegger learned the ropes in the Capitol, compromised with Democrats, avoided confrontation and, in the end, made little progress on the fundamental problems that bedeviled the state. The senator offered muted criticism when appropriate, support where he could.
Then, Wednesday night, suddenly everything changed. It was if the flashy governor were channeling his straight-laced colleague. Schwarzenegger's speech sounded almost as if McClintock had written it.
"Maybe I should have copyrighted some of my ideas," McClintock said with a laugh when I asked him later about the resemblance.
McClintock, some might remember, was one of only a handful of lawmakers to vote against a pension bill in 1999 that boosted state retirement benefits and paved the way for a wave of local pension increases that have threatened the financial solvency of some cities and counties. Three years later, McClintock was the only legislator to vote against a lavish new contract for the state's correctional officers, or prison guards. And all along he warned that the state's spending growth could not be sustained.
Now Schwarzenegger was saying that pension bloat, the guards union and other ills McClintock has spotlighted over the years were the heart of the state's problems. And with no apparent bitterness, McClintock endorsed the Schwarzenegger agenda.
Read the whole column here. The Weintraub column archive is here.