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Harold Meyerson - Proposition 13 and the Roots of California's Budgetary Problems  

But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue. Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature, though in 47 other states a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds -- representing just over one-third of the districts -- in both houses of the legislature.

The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the legislature a new, proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, who dubbed themselves "the Neanderthals." Compared to today's GOP state legislators, though, the Neanderthals look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes (increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote). Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government

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