The California State Assembly and Senate are poised to vote on what appears to be a doomed-to-fail budget stemming from Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Democrat from Los Angeles and Speaker of the California State Assembly. The Governor has announced he will veto the budget because of the tax increases imposed in the plan and the Assembly Republicans wont vote for it either — the few who did back in February now face recall challenges.

The Democrat proposal seeks to avoid making cuts to some state programs by creating an oil extraction tax, increasing the vehicle license fee and increasing the tax on cigarettes.  All this seems pretty normal, but signs are beginning to show that perhaps even the Assembly Democrats, Bass’s own caucus members don’t support her plan.

Democrat Assemblyman Juan Arambula from Fresno has broken ties with the Democratic Party and registered himself to vote as a Decline to State voter. According to the Los Angeles Times, Arambula “expressed dismay over the Democrats’ deep ties to labor unions” and that “his unhappiness with Democratic leaders on several fronts has been no secret in the Capitol.”

Democrats have continued to lose ground in the budget battle since the May 19 election where voters rejected all 5 of the budget ballot measures by a margin of 2 to 1, including a $16 billion tax increase package and $9 billion in spending for K-12 Education.

Even Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg seems to be positioning himself away from Karen Bass and her union-backed budget.  Where Steinberg was a fervent leader who passed the February budget proposal with an iron fist – using 24-hour Senate sessions to coerce Republicans to support the plan – he makes minimally supportive statements for Karen Bass’s budget, probably because he knows he doesn’t have the votes to pass it.

This all boils down to program cuts and standing up to Unions.  Darrell Steinberg has already shown he has the fortitude to do the right thing, rather than what the union leadership tells him to do, yet Karen Bass continues to progress a union-centered agenda, under the auspice of social safety net protections.  Bass needs to wake up and smell the coffee.  Either pass a reasonable budget — one without a union payout– or resign and let someone else do it.