A veto for the budget proposed by legislative leaders is a certainty, Democrat lawmakers said May 25, as the House and Senate prepared to pass a spending plan.
House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27, said Republican leaders were pushing ahead on a budget proposal, despite not having an agreement with Democrat Governor Napolitano.
“We’re just going to let them do it and let her veto the damn thing and come back on Tuesday and start over again,” he said.
At press time May 25, leaders in the House were preparing to pass a budget proposal, while Senate leaders were considering passing their own budget plan. Both chambers must approve the same budgets before they go to the governor.
For the second year in a row, Republican legislative leaders have insisted any budget that comes out of the Legislature will do so by getting the necessary votes from the majority caucuses. Republicans are the majority, they say, and the budget ought to reflect their values first and foremost.
Although the gambit worked last year — a budget compromise was reached between Governor Napolitano and Republicans that won the support of most of the majority party — many Republicans are unwilling to sign onto the budget as it is currently crafted. Some are saying leadership should abandon the Republican-budget strategy because it is not working.
The House and the Senate have had difficulty agreeing on a single budget plan, House Majority Leader Steve Tully told House Republicans in a caucus May 23. The crux of the problem between the two legislative chambers is that changes to curry favor among fiscally conservative lawmakers will cause additional opposition among moderate Republicans. While appealing to some of the moderate Republicans will also make the budget more palatable for Ms. Napolitano, it strengthens the opposition of fiscal conservatives.
Rep. Tom O’Halleran, R-1, said May 24 he didn’t think it would be possible to craft a budget acceptable to the governor that would still get 16 Republican votes in the Senate and 31 in the House.
“I don’t know how they’re going to do that,” he said, “with the budget moving higher [than the initial proposal] and senators holding press conferences with pigs, talking about pork [spending].”
In the end, the plan to get enough votes to pass the budget solely in the Republican caucus may fail where it succeeded last year, when fiscal conservative holdouts were persuaded to vote for the budget after Ms. Napolitano agreed to include a private school tax credit program.
This year, some fiscally conservative Republicans say they won’t be talked into voting for a budget they think is bad policy, under the auspices of having their concerns addressed in the negotiating process.
“I have never, ever, in my 11 years in this place seen a budget start up here and go down here,” Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-22, said, moving his hand from eye level to his chest. “It’s impossible.”
Similarly, moderate Republicans who, in the past, have supported early budget plans in order to negotiate a package they could agree with, have said they aren’t going to vote in favor of a budget the governor has said she will veto.
“I’m don’t want to vote on budget after budget if it’s not going to get signed by the governor,” Rep. Lucy Mason, R-1, said. “It’s a waste of time.”
Rep. Jennifer Burns, R-25, who is the vice chair of the Appropriations B Committee, said she supports the way leadership has chosen to handle the budget, even though she thinks including Democrats more meaningfully in budget discussions would speed up the process.
“I’ve never been a fan of ‘31 of 39’ — I’m a fan of ‘31 of 60’,” Ms. Burns said. “We’re the House of Representatives, not the House of the Republican Party.”
Instead of working on a budget that will likely get vetoed as a precursor to hammering out a package that will actually get signed, Ms. Burns says leaders should just hunker down and make the needed compromises.
“Every final budget that’s gone out of here in my four years, I’ve voted ‘yes’ on,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll vote ‘yes’ on the final budget this year.”
Kept out of the loop
One thing both sides — fiscal moderates and conservatives — agree on is they have been largely kept out of the loop. They feel that leadership has not kept them up to date on budget issues.
“I can’t vote on things I don’t know about,” Ms. Mason said.
Similarly, Mr. Farnsworth said, “The process was really not that inclusive.”
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-22, sits on the Appropriations P Committee. The budget bills were never heard in that committee, he said, because leadership had concerns that he and three other fiscal conservatives — Mr. Farnsworth, Rep. Pamela Gorman, R-6, and Rep. Trish Groe, R-3 — would oppose it. He said none of the leaders ever asked him how he intended to vote before deciding not to put the bills in that committee.
“It really just goes to show how irrelevant the committee is,” he said.
Even some fiscally conservative lawmakers said it was time to compromise with the governor on some issues. Rep. Colette Rosati, R-8, said the process has taken too long this year and leadership needs to bite the bullet and reach an agreement.
“They reach a compromise every year,” she said. “We always end the session.”