March 03, 2009 08:20 AM UTC

Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

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• by: Colorado Pols

A faction of Colorado Republican Senators have been expending vast amounts of humid air all evening, trying to dilute, kill or otherwise exact political capital from Senate Bill 228–emerging as by far the biggest intra-GOP battle of this year’s legislative session, SB-228 will repeal the statutory Arveschoug-Bird general fund spending limit.

It looks like a small-scale reprise of congressional Republican opposition to the stimulus package, with less effect since not only will they fail to get anything like unified GOP opposition, Republicans in both chambers either sponsored or got publicly bullied out of sponsoring the bill–“caucus discipline” this ain’t exactly going in. Nonetheless, from a Senate Democrat press release a short while ago:

As of 7:59 p.m., Senate Bill 228 is still being debated on the Senate Floor. SB 228 will eliminate the 6 percent General Fund appropriations provision, also known as Arveschoug-Bird, and help Colorado to avoid making the current budget cuts permanent.  SB 228 will also allow Colorado to maximize federal recovery dollars and get the state’s economy back on track more quickly by giving lawmakers the flexibility address current economic realities. The bill is sponsored by Senator John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Representative Don Marostica (R-Larimer County).  Rep. Marostica is a member of the Joint Budget Committee.

The Republicans are in the fifth hour of a filibuster in an effort to stall progress on SB 228 and have stated their intent to draw out the process several more hours.

In one exchange on the floor, several Republican Senators dramatically pronounced that Colorado will face a fiscal crisis similar to the current one California faces if SB 228 passes…

Which takes some pretty serious willful ignorance, since California suffers from a similar set of constitutionally-interlocking funding mandates and (key here) restrictions that leave them, like us, unable to respond to huge drops in revenue being experienced everywhere today. Ask one of these tens of thousands of California expatriates about Proposition 13 sometime, they’ll tell you all about it.

More from the Colorado Independent–anticipating the inevitable, they’ve already laid down the next prefabricated “line in the sand.” Ritter had better (straight face, quick) veto this apostasy!

“Republican lawmakers called on the governor to commit publicly… [today] to veto another pending proposal that would amount to the largest cut ever in transportation funding,” read the Senate GOP release e-mailed to the press this afternoon.

Throughout the day, the Republicans have been making impassioned arguments in the Senate chambers and in the press against proposed fees and tolls and for the continued right to send tax revenues to road construction at the exclusion of all other government programs…

We kind of wish that “the press” would stop referring to “the Republicans” as some kind of monolithic entity. The fact is there is a major difference of opinion between Republicans on the repeal of Arveschoug-Bird: that difference was the source of embarrassingly public tension between leadership and certain representatives in the last couple of weeks.

And correct us if we’re wrong, but how well did the whole “wall of no” thing work out for John Boehner?

Bottom line: what do you get when a few guys “dig in” for as long a showy parade of obstruction as the press bothers to stick around for, ending with the same outcome (passage) that was inevitable before they made this high dudgeon stink about something maybe 10% of voters actually even understand? Except maybe that voters are increasingly figuring out how all these GOP-engineered limits and “buckets” are really, when you get right down to it, the problem?

Yeah, pretty much (see title).