California State Controller John Chiang recently told legislators that if a budget isn’t passed by June 30th, he will be forced to issue Revenue Anticipation Warrants (commonly known as State IOUs) to all debtors except state employees starting July 2nd.  Elected officials could be much closer to a realistic budget package today, had it not been for Assembly Speaker Karen Bass’s insistence that the Assembly and Senate vote for a budget that the entire Democratic Caucus did not support.  Her political posturing has wasted weeks of negotiating time further proving what the voters have been saying since the election on May 19th — don’t raise taxes.

On May 19th Californians defeated the Democratic Leadership’s 5 ballot initiatives designed to balance the budget by increasing taxes by $16 billion (Proposition 1A) and give an additional $9.3 billion to the Education Lobby (Proposition 1B).  The message heard loud and clear by most elected officials had two parts:  Don’t increase taxes — you already did — and grow some spines and stand up to the unions that won’t let you cut their budgets.

It has been almost 6 weeks since the election and the Democrats, who have solid majorities in both houses, have only proposed 1 budget solution.  This proposal included increases to the Vehicle License Fee, the Gas Tax and the creation of a Oil Extraction Tax (which ultimately amounts to higher gas prices). It also used a smaller reserve than the Governor stated is necessary to avoid future cash crunches and borrowed $2 billion from local governments.  Even will all of these “revenue enhancements” it still only closed $21 billion of the $24 billion budget gap.

Governor Schwarzenegger openly declared he would veto this budget.  All Republicans, including the ones who crossed party lines during the February budget negotiations refused to support the budget.  Even some Democrats didn’t support the budget, including 2 Democratic Senators (Lou Correa and Leland Yee) and Assemblyman Juan Arambula who left the Democratic Party over disagreements with Karen Bass.

Why would the Democrat Leader of the California State Assembly move forward and organize a vote on a budget that she knew was doomed to fail?  In a word.. Politics.

Karen Bass has no real concern for the people of California, or the “social safety net” as she commonly refers to.  Her allegiance is to the California Democratic Party and her job is to elect more Democrats in the 2010 election cycle.  If she proposes a budget that is a liberal’s dream, all of the Liberal Democrats support it and all of the Moderate Democrats and the Republicans oppose it, Liberal Democrats can go home to their districts and tell their supporters that they are proposing the solutions, but the crazy conservatives keep shooting it down.

If she proposed a budget that made a good faith effort to close the budget gap and balance the budget in time to meet the June 30th deadline, she would be scolded by Liberals and Unions as sleeping with the enemy and compromising the social safety net of poor Californians.  It is more politically advantageous to propose a left-wing budget that has no chance of passing than to participate in good faith negotiations.

This is why we have seen Darrell Steinberg distance himself from Karen Bass in recent weeks.  While Darrell Steinberg sees that a Liberal budget has no chance of passing in the Senate and that the Union model of government is not in the best interests of the people, Karen Bass continues to push forward the Union agenda.

If Controller John Chiang is forced to issue IOUs to California contractors or vendors in the coming weeks, or if California fails to pass a budget on time, it will have been because Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has been playing politics for the last 6 weeks rather than trying to help California balance it’s checkbook.