Dan Walters: Angelides unveils tax, spending plan, but he's short on specifics

sacbee.com

Arnold Schwarzenegger's political advisers believe that they have a winning issue in accusing his rival, Phil Angelides, of being a high-spending liberal who never met a tax that he didn't like.

That's Politics 1A -- find something that drives a wedge between one's opponent and voters and pound on it incessantly until the wedge opens an unbridgeable gap, a political "killer application" that anyone seeking office, or advising an candidate, covets.

That said, it's bizarre that Angelides has made it so easy for Schwarzenegger by inexplicably refusing for months to be specific about what he would do on taxes and spending should he be elected governor, while repeatedly promising to be specific.

This week, implicitly acknowledging that he had goofed, Angelides unveiled a tax and spending plan, albeit one that was long on rhetoric and still short on detail. He said he'd raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to close the state budget gap, expand some programs and cut taxes on middle-income families and small businesses. He set the tax increases at about $5 billion a year, plus another $1 billion that he said he could squeeze from state spending.

It's pretty much what Angelides had been saying for the last couple of months, with the added fillip of the tax cut, clearly designed to bolster his claim to represent middle-class aspirations. But even by his numbers, he doesn't really cover all the spending that he's been touting, since he tags the budget deficit alone at $4.5 billion and the tax cuts at around $800 million.

Angelides did not specify what tax loopholes he'd close, saying he'd appoint a blue-ribbon commission to study them -- a step away from specificity. Previous lists of loopholes released by his office generated fierce opposition from affected groups, such as farmers. Moreover, his declaration ignores other spending promises he's made, and the other taxes he's endorsed at one point or another, such as those in ballot measures. Finally, he doesn't explain what would happen when his three-year surtax on the wealthy expired.

All in all, therefore, Angelides has not put the tax issue to rest, leaving room for the Schwarzenegger camp to continue its almost daily drumbeat of allegations that Angelides wants to impose huge new tax burdens.

"Phil Angelides has $18 billion in new taxes," Schwarzenegger's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, told reporters the other day as his campaign released its list, along with an inventory of news stories and other substantiation for the claim. About $7 billion of the $18 billion figure is an Angelides-backed health care mandate on employers, which is, strictly speaking, not a tax but would be deemed a taxlike burden by business.

Angelides wants his wedge issue to be depicting Schwarzenegger as President Bush's political twin, thus capitalizing on Bush's very low standing in the state. At a news conference with other Democratic nominees for statewide office (all of whom may be running stronger than him at the moment), he referred scornfully to "the Bush- Schwarzenegger Republican ticket."

Guilt by association is a questionable strategy at best, and Schwarzenegger's differences with Bush have been many and public. It might resonate with true-blue Democrats but they presumably are already voting for Angelides and there's no reason to believe that it would be decisive with all-important independent voters, who are much more interested in how someone would govern California. There is, moreover, no indication that the issue that drives Bush's unpopularity, the war in Iraq, will be part of California's political equation this year.

Had politicians not gerrymandered the state's congressional districts five years ago, thereby rendering all 53 of them uncompetitive, we might have seen an Iraq war debate this year, but with all of the congressional elections already decided, there will be no such confrontation.

Briefly, with the five-month period between the June primary and the November runoff already half gone, Angelides still needs a "killer app" while Schwarzenegger has found an effective issue in spending and taxes. Given Angelides' lifelong quest, bordering on obsession, for high office, it's odd that he allowed himself to fall into this dilemma.