GOP SENATORS MUST RESTRAIN BUDGET BEAST.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

AFTER buying the votes of four pliant Republicans and thinking he had passed Gov. Gray Davis' $101 billion budget through the state Assembly, Speaker Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, was in full gloat mode.

``I'm very proud that the Assembly - every Democrat and a number of Republicans - stood up for a responsible budget and rejected the phony arguments of the far right,'' he boasted.

The far right, according to Hertzberg, consists of the dispirited Republicans who dared to balk at a budget that increases spending at twice the rate of inflation. His barbed boast nicely illustrates just how dishonest the state budget process has become - and how difficult it is to contain Sacramento's voracious appetite.

The Republicans who ``stood up'' with the Assembly's united Democrats - and provided them with the two-thirds majority required to pass state budgets - were merely getting in line for a hearty serving of pork. To secure their votes, Democrats promised them nearly $80 million worth of goodies in their home districts, including agricultural subsidies, a Little League field and $500,000 for the state's first Italian-American museum.

But moments after betraying their GOP colleagues, the Republican defectors stabbed their new Democratic comrades in the back. (Alliances of greed dissolve quickly.) Despite voting for the Democrats' budget, they withheld their support for a series of smaller bills necessary to complete its passage.

Surprised Assembly Democrats are now left scurrying for a way to resurrect their deal with wayward Republicans. Meanwhile, the duty of defending a modicum of fiscal restraint falls to the Senate Republican caucus, where all it takes is one defection to give Democrats the requisite supermajority.

So far, GOP senators have held their ground, withstanding the temptation to yield to the omnivorous budget beast and go home for summer recess. But if the bookies in Las Vegas were taking bets, they'd give odds to the beast. The budget is already three weeks overdue on its constitutional deadline, and Democrats seem more likely to bribe a few Republicans than to relent.

Offering bribes is easy when you've got $101 billion - $3,000 for every man, woman and child - at your disposal. The bigger a government gets, the harder it becomes to scale back, as vested interests grow too numerous and powerful. For politicians, it's easier to buy everyone off than to make even modest cuts.

It's telling that Hertzberg - a self-professed moderate - would consider this sort of politicized spending spree ``responsible.''

State Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Granada Hills, one of the few Sacramento pols worthy of the ``responsible'' label, puts the size of the proposed budget into perspective. He points out that, adjusted for inflation, next year the state will spend more than twice as much per capita as it did during the tax-and-spend days of Gov. Pat Brown. That's about 66 percent more than the current per capita expenditures in neighboring Arizona.

But the Senate's Republicans, well aware of their limitations and with a penchant for spending of their own, have long since given up the fight to seriously restrain the state government. They're willing to roll over on almost all of the budget, grant Davis his proposed spending, even drop their demands for further tax relief - but they're digging in their heels on a planned quarter-cent hike in the state sales tax.

Of course, in Hertzberg's mind, it's not a tax increase - that's the ``phony argument'' he accuses the legislature's not-so-vast right-wing conspiracy of perpetuating. The way he parses the words, the legislation that stands to take upward of an extra $100 from the average Californian family next year is merely the end of a ``temporary rollback'' in the state sales tax.

It depends on what your definition of a tax hike is.

Last year, the budget surplus triggered a 1991 law requiring Sacramento to trim the sales tax by 0.25 percent. Davis grudgingly obliged by approving the cut just in time for the November election. When faced with the opportunity to renew it in the 2002 budget, he declined.

In other words, the rollback was temporary only because Davis refused to make it permanent. And if Democrats get their way, Californians will pay higher sales taxes in 2002 than they did in 2001. No matter how much Hertzberg might try to spin it, that's a tax hike.

As McClintock, paraphrasing Lincoln, remarked, ``You cannot disprove Euclidean geometry by calling Euclid a liar.'' Characterizing the state's Republicans as a dishonest right-wing cadre doesn't make the Democrats' tax hike any more palatable, or a budget that spends more than $2,000 a minute any more responsible.