Deja vu Depression sets in

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

On Jan. 24, after Gov. Brian Sandoval gave his State of the State speech, here’s what we knew:

The governor’s no-new-taxes budget actually had an additional $1 billion in new spending, built on highly questionable fiscal sleight of hand.

Legislative Democrats were against the administration’s financial blueprint, essentially declaring it DOA and vowing not to let certain cuts go through, even though they declined to acknowledge the need for more taxes.

Conservatives lionized Sandoval as a budget-slashing reformer while liberals excoriated him as Jim Gibbons reanimated. Higher and lower education advocates warned of an apocalypse nigh.

Thus was the session framed.

One month later, with nearly a fifth of the legislative session evaporated, here’s what more we know:

Nothing.

Sandoval’s resoluteness has been matched by the Democrats’ theatrics, with no change in rhetoric, except an occasional ratcheting-up of the Cassandra contest among Democrats and their allies. How many different, more graphic ways are there to say the world is going to end if Sandoval’s budget passes? I fear we may get an answer by sine die.

If I sound frustrated, it is a biennial affliction known as Déjà vu Depression. Alas, there is nothing to treat this condition, only nightly stops at Adele’s or a dip into the home wine stock to numb the pain.

If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all — governor presents budget, legislators criticize, special interests wail and … nothing happens, except for some short-term, harebrained, illogical “solution.”

When will all of this talk translate into action? Plenty of time for hopes to be dashed again.

I can tell many Democratic lawmakers — and some Republicans, too — are sincerely concerned about a budget that supposedly is a path to a better future but actually is a bridge not to nowhere but to somewhere the state cannot afford to go. Behind the ineffectual clucking of the Chicken Littles is an inexorable truth: Higher education essentially has had its budget decimated during the past two years — watch UNLV transmogrify into Tumbleweed Tech (back to the past) — and lower education, already funded at paltry levels, is about to be reformed without resources.

As this occurs, legislative Democrats are operating as if they are too clever by half, winking at the notion that their rhetoric is a little light without funding. Trust us, they whisper; be patient.

Déjà vu Depression. Bottoms up.

The latest in the “We’ll show you the pain and you’ll give us your taxes” plan is the Senate Democrats commissioning a poll and then quietly sharing it with folks. Breaking news: They found, as the retailers did in a survey, that people don’t want education disemboweled and prefer more spending than deeper cuts.

Forget that those numbers could dramatically change if a tax plan were to become real. But more to the point: If the Democrats believe their own survey, then why not give the people what they want, a tax plan to counteract the cuts? Don’t they have the courage of their polling?

Déjà vu Depression. Pass the Glenlivet, please.

Meanwhile, the Senate Republicans last week released a letter to disabuse anyone of the notion that they are not automatons following the programming installed by Sandoval. After three paragraphs of rhetoric as empty as any the Democrats have disgorged, the GOP missive concluded with a declaration “that you have our unwavering support for your plan to balance the budget while fighting job-killing taxes.”

Of course the target audience of the letter was not Sandoval but the public. Yet, such missives make any change of mind more difficult to sell later.

Déjà vu Depression. Need wine to block out the whine.

It’s easy to criticize Sandoval for his unflinching adherence to his silly pledge, no matter how sincere he is in his conviction. But he has what the Democrats do not: A plan to back up his rhetoric. And the longer they go without one, the less chance they will come up with one that can pass.

A solution is at hand — get rid of sales/business tax sunsets and enact a sales tax on services or franchise tax. Voilà, $1.25 billion in taxes, $1.25 billion in cuts. A wide array of big business interests — and some small-business advocates — would sign on if education and public-benefit reform could be achieved.

Some lawmakers already are talking of going to the ballot with a tax plan, which is the coward’s way out and an acknowledgment of their own irrelevancy. But the preferred method is to wait until it’s too late to do anything substantive, cobble together something replete with gimmicks and transfers (just like the Sandoval budget) and go home to sell the garbage to voters.

Déjà vu Depression. Who’s drinking with me?