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The governor of Florida combines the savvy of a seasoned politician
with a sense of humor that would better befit a junior-high student.
No one comes through Jeb Bush's office in Tallahassee without getting
at least a gentle ribbing; the man likes to joke around. But when
he talks about Donna Arduin, his tone changes, his eyebrows settle,
and he begins to celebrate his state and the fiscal health he wholeheartedly
attributes to his former budget manager. "What state improved
to a triple-A bond rating during these tough times? What state
ran an $8.6-billion surplus? She's the budget king."
Arduin so effectively revamped Florida's budget, Bush says, that
she made it possible for him to make good on almost all his campaign
promises, cut taxes, and build a surplus, all despite an economy
that continued to lean on tourism even after 9/11 made Americans
reluctant to travel.
Arduin's work in Florida put her at the top of Arnold Schwarzenegger's
short list when he took over California and needed someone to whip
his state into fiscal solvency, so Bush reluctantly let her go
for a month to oversee an audit. Schwarzenegger put her on his
cabinet, a month turned into a year, and Arduin never came back. "I
gave Arduin to California on loan," Bush says, with a mischievous
grin. "Typical of California that they don't pay back their
loans."
Arduin, who graduated from Duke in 1985 with majors in economics
and public policy, says she is "libertarian--as in philosophy,
not political-party affiliation." Which seems appropriate,
because being a libertarian in politics is something of a paradoxical
endeavor. "I joined government to shrink it," she says.
Bush is of a similar ilk: When a predecessor in the governor's
office named him the state's secretary of commerce, his first move
was to eliminate his own agency. With parallel philosophies on
how to manage an economy, Bush and Arduin get along like old war
buddies. During Bush's first term, that's more or less what they
were.
That first year, Arduin and the governor set fire to the Florida
assembly. "When the budget came in for approval, we vetoed
over $300 million in pork-barrel spending," says Arduin. "The
next day, nobody in the capitol would even talk to me."
Arduin received plenty of criticism from both sides of the aisle
over cuts she made to Florida's budget, but after making a splash
in the Sunshine State, she faced a ready corps of critics in California.
More visibility brought more acute criticism of her controversial
policies, scrutiny was unrelenting, and Arduin was routinely blasted.
Her $900 million cuts in Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program,
and $800 million in programs intended to bring welfare recipients
into the workforce stirred up a veritable infantry of opponents,
to whom she responds succinctly: "The state was spending $15
billion more than it was taking in."
Physicians spoke out about cuts to California health programs that
Arduin oversaw, including a limit on the number of children allowed
into the Healthy Families Program, and slashes in the state's contribution
to Medi-Cal. "It's unconscionable to take the economic savings
that we know the state has got to do and put that burden literally
on the life of a young child," Alan Lewis, a physician at
Children's Hospital Los Angeles, told the Los
Angeles Times. "This
is looking a child in the eye and saying, 'No, you're going to
have to wait to be treated.' "
But Arduin says she merely "proposed eliminating the entitlement
nature of a lot of those programs. When Arnold went into the budget,
it was all about spending programs on autopilot." Spending
levels on many of those programs had been statutorily mandated,
she says, but funding hadn't, so "if you just sat back and
let the programs run, there would never be enough revenue. The
legislature was almost not even needed in California."
Still, criticisms abounded, especially about programs like welfare
and Welfare to Work. One critic characterized Arduin's cuts as "sanctioning
children for what adults do."
"The idea is to teach them to fish rather than give them a
fish," Arduin says. "And they need a little push sometimes.
The system has become a vicious cycle. It traps people." But
even if her tough-love approach to social programs changes the
behavior of 90 percent of parents on welfare, she says she'll inevitably "hear
an argument on the other side" that the children of the other
10 percent "will suffer." She dismisses such statements
as baseless political fodder. "There's no evidence that if
you give a welfare recipient cash, they're spending it on their
kids."
Arduin has learned to stick to her principles and ignore criticisms
she characterizes as sensationalistic, unfounded, and often compromised
by their source. "If you're a not-for-profit provider, you're
concerned about your funding stream. Instead of expressing concern
that the country's not going to pick up their tab, they talk about
who's going to get hurt. It's a great way to make noise."
On a cool Monday night in March, Donna Arduin pulls a Mercedes
E-class up to the Governor's Club in Tallahassee and hands the
keys to a valet. She walks into a room full of state senators and
lobbyists and makes her way from table to table. A player piano
sends lounge music wafting over a steady rhythm of chatter and
low rumbles of laughter, the noise mingling with smoke eddying
from expensive cigars. A plasma screen shows FOX News on mute,
but the Florida lawmakers, who have put their Blackberrys and Palm
Pilots on tables next to single-malts and merlots, are too engrossed
in conversation to notice.
Still, no conversation survives Arduin's presence--as soon as she
makes her subtle overture to a table of Florida's landed elite,
they're out of their seats hugging her and kissing her on the cheek.
It's the legislative period in Florida, which is condensed into
two months of what Arduin calls a "frat party, at least as
I remember them." So much legislation gets done over drinks
at nightspots like the Governor's Club that Arduin's boyfriend,
Dave Ericks, a lobbyist, decided to buy one. It seems to make sense:
The Florida Assembly's Republican majority comprises mostly expats
from the private sector who've made their fortunes and live by
the philosophy that a little diversion is lubricant for productivity.
Arduin swears they get as much done in two months as any other
state does in a year. But tonight at the Governor's Club, it's
all about Arduin. She's been more or less absent for two years--away
working with Schwarzenegger, then starting up Arduin, Laffer & Moore,
the private economic-consulting firm that now takes up the lion's
share of her time.
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