During the debate with Phil Angelides, one of the Governor’s “hey look, I’m a movie star, I can say whatever I want up here” lines was accusing Mr Angelides of getting a “gleam in his eye” when he talked about taxes.
What gives the Governor the gleam, though, is the spending. On some level this is great: pro-civilization Republicans are unfortunately few and far between. But at some point, the Governor has to square his love of spending with some thinking about who is going to pay for all this stuff. He simply can not keep putting everything on the credit card. If you missed the State of the State address last night, the Gov has an incredibly fancy website up where you can go for the details.
There is broad agreement across left and right on this. The FlashReport’s Jon Fleischman agrees…

I opposed the Infrastructure Bonds on last November’s ballot because I felt that with a state budget of well over $100 billion, the Governor and legislators should be making a large, very real annual contribution towards infrastructure in current dollars (and not just by committing a fraction of the budget towards bond repayment).

Speak Out California did not oppose the bonds because it’s blindingly obvious that the future prosperity of our state requires them. Ditto for what the Governor calls his “Strategic Research and Innovation Initiative” – investing in the future of this state is the definition of a wise investment. But we made the case then and continue to believe that this spending must be coupled with a realistic assessment of the state’s revenue picture. We still have a structural deficit (which could get much worse over the next few years as the housing slowdown kicks in) and we still have a essentially a flat to slightly regressive tax distribution. Until those problems are fixed, the legislature should act to keep the Governor away from the credit cards.
Also, the Governor went zero for two on our health care principles. More on that soon.