SACRAMENTO, CA - Today Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature should be paying close attention -- because yesterday California voters declined to extend welfare benefits to politicians.

A full 74.5 percent of voters took down Proposition 89, which would have placed politicians on the dole and boosted taxes to boot. Californians understood that political contributions from business were already limited by Proposition 34, and that public financing in other states has not led to meaningful reform. Voters had seen the tide of political junk mail and decided they didn't want to pay for it. And that wasn't the only "reform'' Californians rejected yesterday.

A whopping 76.9 percent of California voters looked at their property tax bill and decided that it was already hefty enough. Proposition 88 would have slapped a $50 parcel tax on every property owner in California, from Beverly Hills to the outback of Yolo and Inyo counties. It would have even applied to boat slips. Worse, the money from this tax would have been dumped into wasteful and unproven education programs. Voters remembered that they had already limited property taxes through Proposition 13. That is why 76.9 percent of them, a landslide by any definition, opted to lock and load on tax-and-spend bandits coming through the back door.

Proposition 86 would have raised taxes on tobacco and hooked hospitals on the funds. It would have enrolled more children in government health care and reduced families' choices. Voters rejected such a policy and quashed Proposition 86 by a margin of 52.1 to 47.9 percent.

Californians want more jobs, but 54.7 percent of voters declined to create new positions for bureaucrats by rejecting Proposition 87. This measure would have required blind faith that a kind of government energy DMV would somehow show us the way to a cleaner and more efficient future. Voters were aware that a good portion of what they pay for gasoline is already taxes and fees, and that it is not good policy to slap additional levies on the companies that find the oil, drill for it, and deliver gasoline to the pump. For the record, the government of California does not do that. Neither does it manufacture pharmaceuticals.

The common thread here should be obvious: taxes. Income, property and sales taxes are already high, but the acolytes of taxolatry want them to be higher. For their part, voters don't want higher taxes and more government. That is the lesson of yesterday's election in the Golden State.

Californians work hard for their money. To allow them to keep more of what they earn is not a gift from government that someone needs to pay for. Neither does the desire of a worker to keep more of what she earns constitute "greed." Greed takes place when some people want to grab more of what other people earn, without supplying much of anything in return. And when a government agency gets a 10-percent budget increase instead of 15 percent, that is not a "budget cut," as it is known in Washington and Sacramento.

California voters can see through that kind of doublespeak and have good reason to celebrate. Yesterday they became policy makers, and they took full advantage. By rejecting Propositions 86, 87, 88, and 89, they turned aside bad policies, checked government expansion, and blocked the hand of government from digging yet deeper into their pockets.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is Editorial Director at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at
lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.