Getting "Lost," Going Rogue and Putting Jobs First
By JEFF MILLER, Published in Orange County Register, 2/13/2010

I may be a couple seasons behind in keeping up with the TV drama "Lost," but when you serve in the Legislature, you really get a sense of what it's like to be one of the show's characters.  What my colleagues may lack in tattered wardrobes, makeshift housing and a 360-degree ocean view, we more than make up for in uneasy alliances, ominous plotlines, recurring disbelief and one overwhelming and inescapable question: How did we get here?

Where is here?  It's a mysterious place of billion-dollar deficits, millions of job losses and thousands of excuses leading to a single inevitable conclusion.  If Sacramento does not change its ways, things will only get worse.  And no, neither the Congress nor the Obama Administration is flying in anytime soon to whisk us away to safety.

The first step to any recovery is to admit you have a problem.  And California state government has a problem.  We spend too much, tax too highly and regulate too often.  Like any binge, it was fun for some while it lasted, and now the bill is coming due.  Buying a round of drinks for friends is one thing, but buying a round for everyone you've ever met every day for a decade will surely put you into bankruptcy.  This is where we are today.

A leading concern for my Republican colleagues is the Democrats' obsession with - and only with - balancing the budget.  In the abstract, this is a laudable goal.  But it will do nothing to deal with the fact that this simply cannot go on.  Our fiscal condition is not in peril because the budget is out of balance - in fact, it is just the reverse.

For months now, many leading figures in the Capitol have looked at our massive budget deficit the way a losing gambler looks at a six-figure IOU held by a Vegas casino: As something to desperately pay off, lest the pit boss decline your marker (or worse). 

The problem with this desperate short-term approach is that even if successful, it virtually guarantees it will happen again ... and again.

Some of my colleagues express serious doubts about our future direction, others an evident frustration about the daily drumbeat of how we are going to make do with less, rather than spend and appropriate more - summed up by a sort of "I didn't sign up for this" expression of discontent with the job.

While the atmosphere in the Capitol may be dour, I do not share the ennui that has embraced the building.  In fact, the real winners in this debate will be the ones who energetically and enthusiastically offer real solutions and a better vision of California's future.

If we do not shrink government, reduce the business burden and create new opportunities for California, it will not matter how many tough choices we make, or how often we pledge to make them.  The only solution is to create an opportunity environment that is centered on job creation and private sector strength.  We've tried the other way, and this is where it got us.

The Legislature and Governor must commit to a "Jobs First" focus in which small businesses and larger employers - not big government - are empowered and encouraged to expand facilities, invest in new equipment and create the new employment that is an indispensable part of any economic recovery.

Of course, the screams of the others' opposition will be loud and long.  But they must not drown out what we all know to be true or halt the momentum that is emerging across the country.  Even the President's State of the Union address offered that his number one priority this year is job creation.  It will be disappointing if my Democrat colleagues choose this policy choice to go rogue and decline to follow the White House's lead.

What else will it take?  Rather than the usual partisan sword-fighting, banker's hours and three-day work weeks, this should be a year of unprecedented cooperation in the Capitol.  It may be a long, lost art, but even the surviving passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 have employed it in times of maximum duress and shared circumstance. 

We are all on this island together, swimming is not an option and there is no alternate reality that will explain it all to us.