Budget Update: Sen. Russell Pearce fails to deliver Republican votes in his Senate Appropriations Committee

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The man who would be king of Arizona (if not for the inconvenience of those pesky elections) failed to deliver the necessary Republican votes today in his Senate Appropriations Committee on the first of a package of 12 "feed" bills for the compromise budget deal between the Accidental Governor and her GOP insane clown posse leadership. Arizona budget deal takes a step backward:

A tenuous budget deal between Gov. Jan Brewer and GOP legislative leaders took a step backward Monday morning, with the Senate Appropriations Committee rejecting a key portion of the plan.

The feed bill, Senate Bill 1470, failed in the committee on a 4-4 vote — a majority vote is necessary for passage. Republican Sens. Ron Gould, Jack Harper and Steve Pierce joined with Democratic Sen. Paula Aboud to oppose the measure, the first in a series of bills that make up the budget package for fiscal 2010.

Following the vote, Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, immediately recessed the committee. Moments later, the committee reconvened to reconsider the bill. But with the full slate of four Democrats finally joining the committee, it appeared that bill supporters were still short of the votes they need.

The committee is in recess once more.

Gould said he is opposing the budget deal because legislators have received so little briefing about the contents of the spending package. “I'm not moving this bill,” he said. “I don't know what's in it.”

Harper said he doesn't want to see the new proposal take the place of a GOP-led legislative plan that passed the House and Senate earlier this month. That plan was never forwarded to Brewer out of fear that she would veto it. Negotiations ensued, resulting in a new plan with virtually the same amount of spending cuts as the first proposal, but with new elements such as a tax hike to be referred to the November ballot and a flat state income tax to be implemented in 2012.

Harper called the initial budget plan better than the new version now sputtering in the House and Senate.

“I'd like it portrayed that I'm leading the opposition to adding more spending back into the budget we passed,” he said.

Don't worry, Jack. Everyone knows that you are an ideological wingnut. Your sorry reputation is intact.

This does not bode well for the compromise budget deal surviving. The Accidental Governor and her GOP insane clown posse leadership appear to be heading for defeat at the hands of their own GOP Caucus. I'm not sure they have a rabbit to pull out of the hat before Midnight Tuesday.

Tick, tock, tick, tock…

UPDATE: Senate President Bob "Bluto" Burns is one evil bastard. Thwarted in the Senate Appropriations Committee – the committee which actually has jurisdiction over budget matters – Bluto reassigned the package of feed bills to the more receptive Committee on Education Accountability and Reform where his winged monkeys dutifully followed his command to pass the feed bills Monday evening on a party-line vote. Legislature struggles to clear backlog of budget bills

It's good to be king so that you can arbitrarily make up rules as you go along to always get what you want. "I love the smell of totalitarianism in the evening."

The measures are expected to be considered by the full Senate and House of Representatives Tuesday.

Most legislators expressed hope that a government shutdown can be averted. But not all.

"We need to cut. We need to right-size government," said Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City. "If we have to shut down Arizona government to do that, so be it."

Sen. Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, said there is a "very high possibility" that the tenuous budget deal will fall apart and legislators will have to return to the Capitol for a special session.