The Democrats need a better plan

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

I was chatting recently with a conservative Republican, one whose anti-tax bona fides are impeccable, and he was expressing his frustration bordering on fury as he watched Gov. Jim Gibbons’ State of the State speech.

“There is no vision,” he exclaimed, again and again. Indeed, I often get the sense that Republicans are much more at their wits’ end about Gibbons than Democrats, who almost like having him there as a man who, as another prominent conservative put it, keeps setting the bar lower “and still manages to trip over it.”

And therein lies my own fear of an opportunity missed, either out of an abundance of political calculation or a triumph of political cowardice, by Democratic leaders who so far have as the only answer to the governor’s proposal: anything but that.

But anything is not something, and in failing to build popular support for an alternative in the run-up to the session, Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley and Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford may have consigned the 2009 Legislature to the same kind of garbled incrementalism on fiscal policy that has characterized past sessions.

To be fair to Horsford and Buckley, they each conducted town halls last year, and Horsford especially has been reaching out to key GOP legislators, including Minority Leader Bill Raggio, to try to build a cooperative spirit.

But a few meetings with the folks does not a grass-roots movement make, and getting friendly with GOP lawmakers may help in the Carson City game, but not among a public that could help scuttle a proposal if voters are not educated about the plan.

Horsford and Buckley have created no momentum going into the Feb. 2 session for any plan to deal with the state’s short- and long-term budget crises. Thus, they run the risk of trying to build consensus within a compressed time frame in the capital bubble, where lobbying forces and external factors can destroy the best-laid plans — if they ever come up with any.

I understand the Democrats’ calculus: If they just look like tax-raisers, they may play into Gibbons’ hands and that may cost them in 2010. But that is the same kind of narrow-minded, myopic vision the governor has displayed. “We don’t know” is not a much better slogan than “no new taxes.”

And they should know by now. It’s not as if the Democrats can claim they didn’t see this coming, as if they did not know what the governor was going to do. Buckley and Horsford — and the rest of the Democrats, too — should not be allowed to run around now like Louis Renault strolling through Rick’s and suddenly discovering gambling going on. They can be shocked, shocked all they like about the governor’s draconian budget, but that’s as much of an act as Renault’s was as he was handed his winnings.

What, we need a tax increase to bridge the gap? Round up the usual suspects.

The window will not remain open for long, if indeed it is still cracked. Budget hearings began this week and Democrats insist they will be the fine-tooth-combers to find the wasteful spending. Oh, please.

Alas, they appear to believe the public is as benighted as Gibbons does when he simply bleats “no new taxes” and thinks everyone will, all seallike, applaud. They are like terrified mice, knowing what they have to do to sound the alarm, but afraid to be the one to bell the cat. And the opportunity is there.

When all Raggio — the state’s most powerful Republican — can muster about the governor’s speech is that he “did a credible job of presenting his case,” that is an exemplar of damning with faint praise. Raggio surely gives the Gibbons budget no credibility and has signaled that he will not allow the devastating cuts Gibbons proposes and will work with Democrats — so long as they work with him.

That is the key to the session if there still is time for a solution — Democrats meeting Raggio, who may be more powerful than ever considering Horsford needs two votes for a taxing supermajority, halfway on issues important to him.

The Democrats, hoping to take the governor’s office and keep the Legislature in their hands in 2010, should start asking themselves what good is power if they don’t use it to accomplish what they believe when they have the chance. If they don’t do so — and tempus fugit — they are no better than the man without the vision they are only too happy to castigate.

If all the Democrats can muster is more brickbats for Gibbons in the coming weeks, I have three words for them: Anything but that.