A Stitch in Haste

This time it’s Supreme Chancellor Schwarzenegger:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has moved to end a budget crisis by sacking 22,000 state workers and ordering pay cuts for 200,000.
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“Today I am exercising my executive authority to avoid a full-blown crisis and keep our state moving forward,” he said.
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California’s state financial controller, John Chiang, a Democrat, has vowed not to implement the pay cuts, saying to do so could risk legal action. He sent a letter to Mr Schwarzenegger on Thursday saying he would defy the order and issue employees their regular salaries. The governor’s executive order, he said, was based on “faulty legal and factual premises”.

Asked whether his administration would sue the state financial controller’s office if it did not comply with the executive order, Mr Schwarzenegger said: “If that’s what it takes. I’m here to make sure that our state functions, and whatever it takes, I will do it.”

Notice carefully Schwarzenegger’s position: It is not based on any clear statement of legal principles: He did not cite to any enumerated power in the California Constitution, or to any other sort of direct authority to arbitrarily breach labor contracts or cut legislatively enacted budget appropriations. He simply harrumphed, rather insolently, that he is The Doer of Whatever It Takes™ and that his power derives not from constitution or statute, but from the nature of the crisis itself.

At least Bush uses something truly monumental as the excuse for his “unitary executive” abuse of power: a new kind of warfare and threat to America. All Schwarzenegger needs to repackage megalomania as “the public good” is an economic hiccup in California.

Republicans — as dedicated to small and limited government as ever.

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Incidentally, where I wonder are all those “noble” and “power-checking” public employee labor unions in all this?

Filed under: Activist Legislators & Nanny Statists, Law, Taxation & Fiscal Policy