If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, maybe it's a duck

...and the results of the special session of the legislature and the Governor's vetoes/acceptances of same look an *awful* lot like continuing resolutions.

Even though no one is using those specific words.

From the AZRepublic's piece on today's budget action -

Gov. Jan Brewer served up a mixed verdict on the state's budget Friday, restoring spending for education and social services, vetoing a tax repeal and abandoning hopes of getting a sales-tax hike before voters this year.

The Republican governor said her actions leave the state able to operate until early next year without the need to borrow money. But lawmakers will need to work on a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to keep Arizona on track, she said.

{snip}

Brewer said she was hopeful a tax referral could be made to the March 2010 ballot.

{snip}

The budget picture at the state Capitol is expected to remain relatively unchanged for the next few weeks. However, Brewer said a “clean up” special session is needed by Sept. 30 to restore policy moves that, left untouched, could harm a dozen state
agencies, including the Arizona Corporation Commission and the state Lottery.

Yes folks, all of the posturing has come down to this -

- The lege passed a budget in the wee hours of July 1, only to see the Governor veto most of it. She left just enough intact to keep the state running while she continued to negotiate with the Republican extremists in the lege, which is most of the caucus these days.

- A couple of weeks later, a partial budget was passed in order to fund education, needed since those pesky public schools were scheduled to begin their fall semesters soon thereafter. And if the schools didn't receive the funds they needed to open, that would have meant that hundreds of thousands of students would not have been in school. And *that* would have meant hundreds of thousands of parents calling and emailing their elected officials, and thousands more would have descended in person on the state capitol to give those same elected officials an earful.

Or two. :))

- Now, the Governor has mostly approved her caucus' unbalanced budget, with no concrete plans to balance it any time soon.

Just a reminder - during most of the Bush Administration, the Bushies and their cohorts in Congress didn't operate under a budget, just a series of continuing resolutions. In addition, Bush's wars were funded "off the books" via special appropriations bills that weren't subject to close scrutiny.

Now, the federal budget is totally screwed.

And Brewer wants to lead Arizona down the same path.


All of the Governor's budget actions can be found here.

State Rep. Daniel Patterson offers his take here.