Assembly OKs Democrats’ Plan to Cut Spending

SACRAMENTO — Despite unified Republican opposition, Assembly Democrats on Monday moved to the Senate a plan they said would balance the budget by cutting state spending and holding taxes at current levels.

The action on the budget bill was only a procedural move because measures that appropriate money require a two-thirds majority for passage. Democrats, who hold 47 of the Assembly’s 80 seats, need at least seven Republican votes--for a total of 54--to pass a budget.

Lacking that two-thirds majority, the Democrats approved, 45 to 30, a bill that included their $60.3-billion plan in concept but will not appropriate the money. They said the unusual action was needed to move the process along, eventually ending up in the Assembly-Senate conference committee, which will hash out details.

Republicans, including Gov. Pete Wilson, have said that the Democratic plan cannot be balanced without additional legislation needed to make the deep cuts in state services that the Democrats have proposed.

Before moving the spending plan to the Senate, Assembly Democrats defeated a series of Republican amendments, including one proposing to cut $2.5 billion in the fiscal year beginning July 1. That plan, proposed by Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), included a provision to reduce spending on state prisons by more than one-third, or $948 million.

In a related development Monday, state Controller Gray Davis reported that March revenues from the state’s three major taxes were $2.2 billion, or $520 million below Wilson Administration projections prepared for this fiscal year’s budget.

For the fiscal year, receipts from the personal income, bank and corporation, and sales taxes are $1.7 billion--or 6.8%--below the earlier projection and $612 million less than an updated forecast the Administration issued in February.