Jerry Brown shows divided thinking on deficits

Gov. Jerry Brown is forever cautioning California residents and politicians about the need to balance the state budget and pay down debt.

But the other day, in talking about the costs of extending medical insurance coverage to millions of Californians, he thanked the federal government for going more deeply into debt to pay for it.

Nor is Brown confining his support for expanding federal deficits to health care for the poor.

He’s also counting on tens of billions of federal dollars – borrowed dollars – to underwrite large portions of the state budget and to finance the statewide bullet train system he so ardently embraces.

Recently, in fact, Brown told reporters that he’s worried about the political stalemate in Washington that could lead to automatic cuts in federal spending that could have a major impact on the state budget – although he refused to take a position on the “sequestration” of federal money.

So, one might ask, is Brown being a hypocrite for preaching balanced budgets and austerity in California while, in effect, praising the federal government for running up even more debt?

It sure sounds like it – especially since Brown has been very critical of federal deficits during his past political incarnations.

When California voters passed Proposition 13, the landmark property tax limit, in 1978, they did so against Brown’s advice.

He denounced the measure before the election, saying it was “a rip-off . . . a legal morass and . . . a long-term tax increase,” among other epithets, but quickly embraced it afterward, labeling himself a “born-again tax cutter.”

That reversal won him re-election to a second term in 1978, and Brown continued to chant the mantra by running for president in 1980 as an apostle of a constitutional amendment to require the federal budget to be balanced.

His first step was to sponsor a resolution in the state Legislature endorsing such an amendment, which generated some splashy legislative hearings in which Brown personally jousted with his fellow Democrats over the issue.

Brown’s 1980 campaign for the White House – his second – didn’t go very far, generating just one delegate to the Democratic National Convention that renominated Jimmy Carter for a second term. But his Proposition 13-spawned railing against federal deficits did have legs, becoming one of Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical points in his successful campaign to oust Carter from the White House.

During Brown’s third and final presidential campaign 12 years later, he paddled his political canoe on the left, rather than the right, but lost out to Bill Clinton.

Given that rather erratic history on the issue, perhaps there’s nothing particularly strange about Brown’s advocacy of balanced budgets in California and – indirectly – unbalanced budgets in Washington.

Dan Walters is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Reach him at dwalters@sacbee.com.