Brown Wants to Extend Arnold Tax Hikes

We don't like to crow at Prop Zero when we're right (because, at the speed bloggers have to react, we're often wrong), but we'll make an exception for this news:

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown wants to extend the temporary increases in income taxes, sales taxes and the vehicle license fee approved by the legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2009.

Prop Zero predicted Brown would do this back in October in this post. And we first suggested it had to happen, as a matter of budget math (the state's deficit gets about $8 billion bigger the moment they expire at the end of June 2011), all the way back on June 23 in this post.

OK, that's enough gloating for now. Because the extension of such taxes is a heavy political lift. It'll take a two-thirds vote of the legislature just to put measures on the ballot asking voters to extend the tax increases. Republican lawmakers have indicated they'll block the measures. And even if the taxes somehow get on the ballot, it's far from clear that voters will go along.

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