'SAVE CALIFORNIA' - BUT FOR WHOM?

Byline: Gary M. Galles Local View

ASSEMBLY Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles, announced that Democrats are hitting the road this week to tell Californians ``the truth'' about state budget woes.

The ``Save California'' blitz is designed to energize everyone whose incomes depend on state spending to push for increased taxes rather than the ``dire consequences'' of sharper spending cuts, in preparation for an Assembly budget vote.

This campaign is not about the truth, however. It is, as Yogi Berra would say, ``like deja vu, all over again.'' It repeats the same strategy as a bogus series of state town hall meetings held just months ago.

Then, Wesson announced that the town hall meetings were to give real people a voice in the budget crisis.

However, an internal party memo revealed that to be false. Rather than soliciting input from the public, it spelled out the goal as to ``advance the Democratic Caucus message,'' with witnesses hand-picked to ``convey the desired message.'' They were just a strategy to tar any attempt to cut government spending as unfair, to move public opinion toward the tax increases Democrats want instead.

In each case, facing the prospect of having to live with a stronger brake on government spending, Democrats have chosen to instead choreograph a ``guilt parade'' of the most obviously pitiful and destitute beneficiaries of every program, none of whom should be forced to ``do without,'' to imply how unfair it would be to cut anything.

And these are just the latest, most obviously orchestrated examples of what we see whenever any government program is threatened - we see struggling family farmers when agricultural or water subsidies are under fire; the most seriously ill when medical benefit cuts are proposed; poor inner-city children when education funding is considered, etc.

Democrats' fairness argument is partly correct, but only partly because it ignores the unfairness of the alternatives toward those who will foot the bill.

Spending cutbacks may be unfair to some dependent on them, but every alternative is also unfair. Simply, the state has ratcheted up spending promises far beyond what prospective taxes can fund, and there is no fair way out from those over-promises.

Rather than choosing between fair and unfair options, we must choose between unfair ones.

We could reduce spending. But this is unfair, because government promises of ongoing support have led beneficiaries to count on continued funding at promised levels, and adapt their behavior to those promises.

Having done so, it is unfair to cut funding, because some who relied on those promises have become dependent on the government living up to them.

We could avoid cutting spending as much through higher taxes. But taxpayers have also adapted their behavior to the tax code, and many now need to keep from losing more take-home pay just as much as beneficiaries need their benefits.

Some say we should therefore just tax ``the rich'' more. But beyond ignoring the large inefficiencies and adverse incentive effects that approach would worsen, it would increase the unfairness to higher-income earners, who already pay a sharply disproportionate share of taxes.

Programs could be cut less without increasing taxes more by funding the difference with borrowing - that is, with higher future taxes.

But smoke-and-mirror tactics have nearly exhausted those possibilities already, and that would unfairly burden those left holding the bag for the added future taxes, plus increase uncertainty, as decision-makers must guess how, where and when those future taxes will be assessed.

There is no fair way out from government commitments that exceed the funds available. Some commitments must be broken in a major way.

State over-promises have given everyone plausible claims to fairness on their side, yet something must give. The nearest we can come to fairness is to avoid expanding existing over-commitments and making any new ones, and to look seriously at which set of options will minimize the adverse impacts of unfairness that cannot be avoided.

Demonizing any real consideration of the various spending restraint options, as the ``Save California'' blitz and its predecessor town hall meetings were designed for, only increases the likelihood that there will be more unfairness than necessary.