Legislative Democrats have a plan to get to a plan

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

It’s not a plan. But it’s a path to a plan. Maybe.

Legislative Democrats, who have this miraculous language that allows them to talk about taxes without ever saying the word, are not talking about it again. But their silence/deflection/opacity has been replaced with the contours of a strategy to force the discussion into the open — an interesting gambit that will either harden Republicans into their anti-tax bloc or chip away at the heretofore rock-solid gubernatorial backing.

Beginning next week, on the floors of both houses, each day will be taken up with budget debate, so-called Committees of the Whole replacing the inchoate discussions of the past, pushing every legislator simultaneously to cast a vote on the most contested issues of the session — education and health and human services.

To their credit, Democratic leaders are saying to Republicans: “You have had your chance to stand with the governor. You’ve signed your letters of no-tax support. Now it’s time to show the world you have the voting courage of your written and spoken convictions.”

It is the legislative equivalent of turning a huge spotlight on the real crux of the budget/tax debate — every major media outlet in the state will be covering the floor sessions, and the theater, with the grandstanding and spinning, could be exquisite. And I can’t tell you how much I admire the benign sheen Democrats put on this maneuver, bypassing the money committees so the drama is illuminated on a larger stage:

“This will make it easier for the public to follow legislative activities on these pressing and sometimes contentious issues, and give legislators not serving on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee or Senate Finance Committee more input,” Democrats said in a release.

They say it is about transparency, and it is transparent, all right. And it is designed to take the focus off a governor who has said no-new-taxes and no-trading-for-taxes so often that it has become the only discussion point as he has filled a vacuum Democrats created.

With all due respects to former governors, rarely has a CEO cast a shadow over a session as has Brian Sandoval. It’s not just his tax pledge, but his embrace of it as an idée fixe and his steely determination to adhere to it and insist all legislative Republicans line up behind him.

For legislative Republicans, saying “no new taxes” is a lot different from voting for no new funding, especially as the testimony, with cameras whirring and laptops clacking, outlines what exactly will be slashed at schools, at universities, at community colleges and at social service clinics.

Until now, Republicans have been enabled by the right-wing noise machine, which has pummeled Democrats for their passive-aggressive tax talk and excoriated any GOP lawmakers who even say a word that rhymes with tax. They are good at inspiring fear and they have produced results in some primaries.

Democrats have received little effective cover from progressive groups, which can talk a good game but are perceived to have little political stroke once campaign time comes. In all the years I have been in Carson City, I have never heard one lawmaker say, “I’m really afraid what PLAN (Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada) might do to me in my race next year.” Not once.

So all Democrats have are poll numbers that indicate Nevadans prefer what state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford calls a “balanced approach” — cuts and taxes. And, of course, they have the power to cut programs Republicans, especially in rural communities, really would like to see preserved. And once Sandoval has to stop talking theoretically about vetoing budgets and has to do so, let’s see how resolute he is. (I’d guess he won’t change.)

In the past, Republicans have been allowed to get away with a clever, cynical trick: Voting for enhanced budgets but then voting against the tax increases to fund them. I doubt that will be countenanced this time, although I wouldn’t put it past some of them to try.

So I give Democrats, who I have ridiculed and eviscerated for not having a plan, credit for trying to catalyze action. Finally.

But once they begin to inflict the pain, political and real, next week, by passing budgets that will have severe effects, there is no turning back on the path they have set. Whether it is lifting the tax sunsets or a sales tax on services or some new levy — or the usual ugly agglomeration of revenue measures — they will have to add that unspoken word to their legislative lexicon.

Otherwise, they will have set the Gang of 63 on to a path to nowhere.