The Republican bottom line

As state Sen. Steven Horsford on Monday kicked off a “committee of the whole” meeting — which apparently carries the delightful acronym “COW,” by the way — he made his purpose plain: “We have got to get some indication of where people are,” he said, according to the Review-Journal’s Benjamin Spillman. “I have got to get some indication of where the body stands.”

And by “people,” of course, Horsford means, “Republicans.” And, with all due respect, Republicans have been telling Democrats where they stand for months. It’s the Democrats who haven’t been listening.

Let’s let Assemblyman Mark Sherwood, R-Henderson, explain, in another quote captured by Spillman: “They don’t get it. We don’t care.”

That is to say, Republicans don’t care about the sad stories told by people who will be affected by the budget cuts in Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $5.8 billion spending plan. They don’t care about Democratic threats to re-route money from rural, Republican parts of the state to Clark County (where, it must be said, most of the state’s people actually live). They don’t care about Democrats spiking Republican legislation. They don’t even care about being drawn out of their seats in once-a-decade redistricting.

Get it now, Democrats? Republicans don’t care.

About the only thing Republicans do care about is not voting for a single new tax. Not on corporations, which pay nothing on their profits now. Not on mines, which are enjoying record-high gold prices on minerals they dig out of earth owned by the public. Not even extending taxes people are already paying.

They don’t care. And to get them to care would, quite literally, take a miracle.

“If I could get Jesus to walk through that door, I might trade taxes for it,” said state Sen. Ben Kieckhefer. And if Jesus did walk through the door, what might he tell young Sen. Kieckhefer? “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to the enter the kingdom of heaven?” Or perhaps, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me?” Or the classic: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”

That’s a hearing we’d all like to witness.

That’s not to say Horsford — and his Assembly counterpart, Speaker John Oceguera — don’t have a perfectly valid point as they try to reason with Republicans. “It (the budget stalemate) must be resolved by compromise and consensus,” Horsford told Spillman. And Oceguera: “Compromise means compromise on both sides.”

Indeed, it does. And what have the Republicans agreed to compromise on? While Assembly Republicans have made known a list of compromises that might get them to approve extending soon-to-expire taxes, Senate Republicans and Sandoval have remained steadfast. A person cannot compromise if the only position he can possibly take is the one he started out with.

But that’s the ball game: If Sandoval, through lobbying and refusing to give any ground on taxes is able to force Democrats to accept his budget as is, or perhaps with some minor tweaks, he wins. He’ll be considered a Republican hero, perhaps even a man of vice-presidential timber.

But if he capitulates, if he gives any ground whatever on taxes, he loses, even if doing so would be to the benefit of the state, especially students, the elderly and the sick. It is they, after all, who will bear the brunt of the debate in Carson City.

But the Republicans have an answer to that, and they’ve not been shy about saying it. They don’t care.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. His column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.