Tag Archives: second stimulus

CA-10: An Interview With Lt. Gov. John Garamendi

John Garamendi has been seeking votes in California for well over 30 years.  He first took a run for the Governor’s mansion in 1982, and was set to do so again in 2010 until the seat in CA-10 opened up, and he was inspired to return to Washington, where he served in the Clinton Administration in the Department of the Interior.  He has the most diverse record of anybody in the race, with stints at the federal level, the state legislature, and in two statewide offices, as the Insurance Commissioner and now Lieutenant Governor.  In our interview, we discussed health care, lessons learned from regulating insurance, No Child Left Behind, saving the NUMMI plant in Fremont (more on that from Garamendi here), and foreign policy in Iran.  I found Garamendi to come at issues in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way, and you can see this for yourself below.  A paraphrased transcript follows. (flip it)

DD: Thanks for talking with me today.

John Garamendi: My pleasure.

DD: So how’s it going out there on the campaign trail?

JG: It’s going very well.  Every day, I feel we’re moving along well.  You have everything being done that is normally done in these campaigns.  We have a strong volunteer grassroots organization committed to getting out the vote.  Phonebanking has started, we’ve hit about 30-40 thousand homes.  We’re walking in different communities.  We just had a meeting in Rossmore, with 300 people turning out.  So I think it’s going very well.

DD: Your last several campaigns have been statewide, with district-level campaigning being more retail, how are you finding it?

JG: To me, it’s exactly the same, only it’s done in a smaller area.  I’ve always believed strongly in retail politics.  The only difference is that after the event’s over, I don’t have to get on a Southwest Airlines plane.  We did an African-American church out in Fairfield over the weekend, same as any African-American church in Southern California or anywhere else.  It’s just easier for travel.

DD: OK, let’s hit some issues.  First off, health care.  August is this time where everyone’s making their feelings known about health care in their districts.  What are you hearing in yours?

JG: I am hearing a strong element for single payer, or Medicare for All.  As you may know, I’ve led that debate in this state for many, many years.  I’ve always found it the most efficient, most cost-effective way you can possibly do this.  Just send your premiums to the Medicare office.

So I hear a lot of individuals trending in that direction.  And some of the unions, the California Nurses Association, are also trending in that direction.  There is also a concern about the complexity of the legislation moving through Congress.  And people want to see at the very least a public option to compete with the insurance companies.  Also, with a lot of seniors, the drug issues concern them, both with fixing some of the issues with Medicare Part D and also maintaining what they like about Medicare.  So that’s the range.

DD: Would you vote for any bill that didn’t have at the least a public option that’s available from day one, without a trigger?

JG: Well, I’ve always been a strong voice for Medicare for All.  The fallback position is the public option.  That’s already a compromise.  And so the legislation had to have a public option, I can’t go any further away from that.  The other thing I want to express is that I understand insurance reform, which is a lot of this bill.  I was the main regulator for insurance companies in the largest state in the union.  So I bring a set of knowledge to this debate that not only doesn’t exist among my competitors, but doesn’t exist in Congress.

DD: Let’s talk about that.  Right now, insurance companies are regulated in the states, and so the regulations vary from one place to the next, and can be corrupted by local interests.  Do you support a federal role in insurance regulation?

JG: This is something that we have to figure out with insurance reform and with respect to financial regulation.  The regulatory mechanisms need some clarity.  It simply won’t work to write a law saying to the insurance companies, “Take all comers.”  They will not do it.  So you need a police force.  Someone to enforce that law.  Will that be federal, or based where it is now, at the state level?  That’s the kind of detail that must be worked out.  I mean, we’ve had auto insurance here in California that’s supposed to take all comers, and they find numerous ways to avoid that.  And of course, this is why I support Medicare for All.  You don’t have to worry about any of that.  But as long as we’re going with health insurance reform, I can add something to that process.

DD: What are the pluses and minuses of putting this in the hands of the Feds?

JG: If it’s a federal process, you’d have to set up a massive new federal bureaucracy.  In the positive sense.  But you have to have a police force, because otherwise, the insurers won’t do it.  That’s a major, expensive undertaking for the federal government.  There’s an advantage to the existing mechanism in that it already exists, like with Medicare or Medicaid.  However, you mentioned some of the problems with how the regulation changes depending on the state.  So both options have shortcomings.  Either way, if we have a bill based on insurance reform, it has to be dealt with.  And I’ve been dealing with these companies for eight years of my life.  I know how to do this.

DD: Medicare for All will apparently get a vote now.  Is that helpful?

JG: It’s enormously helpful.  It got pushed to the side of the debate for too long.  Medicare provides about 60% of the care in dollar terms already in this country, and it’s very popular.  If you bring the rest of the population in, on a per-person basis, the cost would decline dramatically.  The money in the private system is good enough to get this done and cover everybody.  And the other important thing is that Medicare allows individual choice of provider.  Whatever doctor you like, you can keep them.  Of course, we know that private insurance restricts your choice of doctor.  So this is the big lie in this debate, the idea that Medicare would have government telling you what doctor to pick.  That’s what happens right now.

DD: Let’s move on.  I noticed on your website you took a lot of time talking about the need to rebuild manufacturing.  We’re seeing this cash for clunkers program becoming very successful as an economic stimulus for the auto industry.  Is that the kind of incentive-based programs that we can use to bring back manufacturing to America?

JG: Not exactly.  The auto industry is not central, but it is important.  That’s why I’m trying to save the NUMMI plant.  1,200 businesses are direct suppliers to NUMMI.  The auto supply industry is one of the largest in America.  So cash for clunkers will help NUMMI.  But what I’m talking about with respect to manufacturing is an economic theory that I developed in the 1980s.  Basically, I figured that you need certain things to maintain the ability to lead as an economic power.  You need a world-class education system and a commitment to research and development.  Through both of those, you can create new things, with a high profit margin, whatever those things are, but new innovations that people find valuable.  Eventually, those new things become a commodity, and once that happens, like all commodities, it seeks the lowest-wage place to be made.  So those things get pushed off, and you have to create more new things, to keep feeding that engine.  So that’s what I’m talking about, high-end manufacturing.

DD: Couldn’t the NUMMI plant be retooled to serve as a place to manufacture those new things, be they innovations in solar or wind technology or new batteries?

JG: Well, we tried this a few years back.  I endorsed a bill in the legislature to provide a specific exemption for sales tax on manufacturing equipment to retool the NUMMI plant for hybrid vehicles.  And that probably would have been enough to keep NUMMI open.  But it didn’t pass.  Right now, what we’re doing is putting together a package for NUMMI of incentives that will hopefully keep them in California.  But it’s more complex than that.  This is like a divorce.  You have GM and Toyota fighting over who owns what widget on the line.  So there are legal issues in play now.  I think we can get it done, because that’s a very efficient plant, one of the most efficient in the country.  But we have to manage this divorce.

DD: Education is another issue you talk about a lot.  The Department of Education just put out this Race to the Top program to offer money to the states with good outcomes, but they are restricting the funds to states which incorporate student testing into teacher evaluations, and because California doesn’t do that, they don’t qualify.  What are your thoughts on that, and this larger divide between education reformers and groups resisting their reforms?

JG: My question about it is basically, what is the equation between the test and teacher evaluations? Are we talking about just the test score? In that case, do I get to choose the students? Because the students and their backgrounds are a contributing factor to their performance. So it’s a complex equation. There’s a socioeconomic element to it. And it’s very difficult to do to take everything into account. I don’t think that testing should be the sole measure of a teacher evaluation. There are multiple factors. My daughter’s a kindergarten teacher, and this year she got to school and there were a lot more kids in her class. So is that a factor? I think we need to evaluate teachers, but we must be fair.

DD: Do you support a reform like paying teachers more to go into poor-performing inner city areas?

JG: I’ve always supported reforms like that. I put up a bill in the 1980s to pay more to math and science teachers, to make sure we were attracting the best of them. And I support sending good teachers into the inner city. We have to pay our teachers better if we want to get the best outcomes.

DD: We are having such a tough time in California, what can the federal government do to alleviate some of the burden here where we are destroying our social safety net during a deep recession?

JG: Well, just to go back to education, one thing the federal government can do is fix No Child Left Behind. It was a great concept, but not good in detail. The reauthorization is coming up, and the Feds had better fund it. You can’t place a burden like that on the states and expect them to deliver. So funding, and some reform of the law, has to get done. I don’t think testing should be the only evaluation of students. There’s a place for it, but we’re building a nation of robots by teaching to the test. I have significant concerns about No Child Left Behind that need to be addressed.

DD: What about beyond that. Would you support a second stimulus focused on the states?

JG: I don’t know whether there will be a second stimulus. But the problem is pretty elemental. California is the 7th, 8th-wealthiest place on Earth. We have made a decision, and it was a decision, not to invest in education. We have plenty of money to fund it, but we made the decision not to. The leadership has refused to use that wealth in the greatest resource we have, and that’s our education system. It’s clear to me that the federal government cannot substitute for the effort that California must make for themselves. We need investment, coupled with serious reform, to break the gridlock. Voting to tax students by raising college rates is just insanity. And the regents and trustees refused to support legislation for an oil severance tax to fund higher education. I brought it to them, and they wouldn’t support it. We are the only oil producing state with no tax on the natural resources coming out of our ground. The oil companies have been able to take it for free for over a century. It’s madness.

So the federal government cannot substitute for California. But I’ll fight to bring money back to the state. First by funding No Child Left Behind. And also, there’s the issue of medical services. The formula for state participation in Medicaid in California is 50-50, an even split between the Feds and the state. In other big states, that ratio is different. In Illinois, New York, it’s more like 60-40, 70-30. Getting a better split in that formula represents a huge amount of money for California. And there are numerous formulas like that. So experience counts in understanding all that.

DD: OK, final question. On your website, I noticed very strong language supporting Israel, and also warning Iran not to continue with their alleged nuclear program. And you advocate for stopping shipments of refined oil to Iran if they refuse to cooperate. Now, I’m assuming that was written before the most recent uprising.

JG: It was, yes.

DD: Do you still believe, given the events over there, that it’s a good idea to stop refined oil shipments, when it may hurt not the regime, but the very people in the streets who are resisting it?

JG: There’s no doubt that the effect of an embargo would hit the economy and the people. That’s what it’s designed to do. I’ve thought long and hard about this, after watching the events take place, and I still believe in the concept. What you have over there is the current government’s legitimacy being questioned. Does that mean they are more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program, to bring something tangible to the people? We don’t know. So I think you have to pull together the interested groups, and that’s Europe, and Russia, Pakistan, the Arab states, they might be more interested than us. And you create a larger coalition to change the behavior of the government. The uprising actually helps in that regard. And like in any negotiation, you have to have a big stick. So I would not drop the embargo possibility. And again, all of this is down the road a piece. Now another big stick would be bombing their facilities, and I think there are some unadvisable consequences to that. So I’d rather use the other stick.

DD: Thanks so much for talking to me today.

JG: Thank you.

CA-10: An Interview With Sen. Mark DeSaulnier

Mark DeSaulnier has had a rapid ascent through the state legislature and now, potentially, into Congress.  Within three years, this former restaurant owner won elections to the State Assembly (in 2006) and the State Senate (in 2008), with a Congressional primary scheduled for September 1.  Prior to that, he was a 3-time member of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and the California Air Resources Board.  A former liberal Republican in the mold of Edward Brooke, DeSaulnier switched parties several years ago and compiled a liberal voting record in the State Legislature.  His first ad of the campaign covered the topic of health care, and I asked him about this and several other issues in an interview conducted last week.  Having taken place before the crucial budget vote, I spent a good deal of time asking DeSaulnier about that, and you can see his responses here.  Depending on your perspective, he either did or did not fulfill the promise to vote against “most” of the budget, by the way, voting no on 11 of 26 bills, including all of the more controversial ones.

I’ll pick up with a paraphrased transcript of the rest of the interview below:

DD: So, other than the budget, how’s it going with your campaign?

Mark DeSaulnier: Well, this is a tough campaign, with a big field and a lot of good candidates.  The polls we’ve done show us winning.  We’ve got 70% of the money that we need to compete, and a lot of great endorsements.  I would say we have the most local endorsements inside the district.  And we’re going to be able to put together a great ground campaign, with people I’ve worked with for 20 years in the district.  I think we’re going to be concentrated in Contra Costa County, where we can post a big number.  I think we’re putting ourselves out there as the local candidate, who has represented the district for a long time.  And we have people out there walking and phoning, putting forward that message.

DD: As long as we’re on California, obviously you’ve seen the dysfunction at the local level.  What do you think you can do at the federal level to remedy this situation?

MD: You know, I read a lot of Paul Krugman, and I agree with him that we’re going to need a second stimulus package.  And I think we need it sooner and not later.  I think we can take what’s been learned from the stimulus package that we’re doing now.  I think the problem is that the banks like Citi and Bank of America aren’t lending, and so we need to require the banks to lend, with relief for the credit worthy who are falling behind on their payments, and more money out to the credit unions who have done a better job handling this crisis.  Next, I think we have to do some sort of fiscal stabilization.  I see it in this state, people who need to access the safety net go up when the economy goes down.  And so we have to break that cycle, and I think we can by providing some relief.  Finally, we should say that we can do things more efficiently.  There shouldn’t be this silo mentality.  I’ll give you an example.  We put together these “one-stops,” places where you can go for unemployment and job training.  And people tell me that you have to get out of one line and pick up a phone in the office to get your unemployment benefits.  That just doesn’t seem like good government to me.  And I think we have an opportunity to make government work better.

DD: Let’s move on to health care.  Seems to be a big issue for you.  What are the principles you carry in this debate?

MD: To me, the gold standard is single payer.  We have the problem of getting health care to those who need it, and also how we get control of costs.  I think the public option is the first step, and if we do it right, it could be, and really I think it should be, single payer.  The question is what are the Democrats willing to give up to get moderates on board, and I think there have to be some lines we cannot cross there.  In the end, it has to be about flexibility and more choice.  That’s the way you’re going to sell this thing.  It’s telling that the moderates want firewalls in their plan, they don’t want the people to have more choice, they want to preserve something for the insurance companies.

DD: Will you commit to not vote for anything that doesn’t have a quality public plan available on day one, not a trigger, open to everyone, and with the kind of rates necessary to force the insurance companies to compete?

MD: Yes.  I think as liberals, as progressives, something we don’t do a lot but which we can learn from Republicans, sometimes we’ve just got to say no.

DD: Congress has started to debate the regulatory reform ideas put forward by the Obama Administration, and they’re getting a ton of pushback from the banking industry, particularly on the concept of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  It’s the same way on a lot of these issues, the banks just won’t relent.  How do we solve this problem?

MD: Honestly, the politics will never get totally fixed without a public finance system in this country.  And then people say, “why should we pay for elections?”  The truth is that the average American is paying disproportionately already, when the giveaways to businesses and corporations are factored in.  They buy elections fairly cheaply, and they get the rewards.  So that’s something we have to pursue.  As far as your question, yes, I think we need a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, in fact I think it should be cabinet-level.  A Secretary of Consumer Protection.  The point to all of this is that if middle income people don’t have wealth, democracy ends.  That’s just the bottom line.  And one way to ensure that is by protecting consumers, so you don’t see all their wealth go into someone else’s pockets.  Inequality is just killing us right now.  Kevin Phillips wrote about this years ago, in Bad Money, and he was very prophetic.  I also think that you can’t reform the financial system without holding people accountable.  And so I would involve the Department of Justice right at the beginning.  That’s the only way to really ensure it doesn’t happen again.

DD: You mention inequality, it’s something Democrats don’t talk about enough.  A recent Wall Street Journal story talked about the top 1% earning 35% of all the compensation in the country.

MD: It’s stunning.  And our tax structure, by the way, rewards the accumulation of wealth, not work.  This happens when you get a financial services economy, which is completely not sustainable.  We don’t have manufacturing, we just have this financial services giant, and it trades in bubbles.  So one way to reduce that inequality is to retool the financial services sector, make it smaller, make it more boring.

DD: OK, last question.  I wanted to ask you about SB375, the smart growth measure that you played a big part in passing last year.  This bill doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it really offers a blueprint to how to achieve smart growth policies with the statewide authority working in concert with local communities.  Do you plan to scale that up if you make it to Congress?

MD: Oh, absolutely, and this is where I think my background really suits me to replace Ellen Tauscher.  I chaired the Transportation Committee in the Assembly as a freshman, I think the first person to do that.  I spent ten years on the California Air Resources Board, and I co-authored SB375.  I’m pretty sure there’s a companion bill in Congress right now.  Doris Matsui (CA-05) is carrying it right now.  I have honed in throughout my career on the changing transportation and mobility side of the energy issue.  We accomplish this, in part by reducing miles, and also finding new energy sources for transportation.  We need more transit, and a move away from single-occupancy vehicles and long commutes.  It’s about bringing the work space closer to the living space, and creating livable communities.  So I think I’m naturally suited  for such a task.  I’d like to get on the Transportation Committee if I get to Congress.

DD: Thanks for your time today.

MD: No problem, thank you.

CA-10: An Interview With Anthony Woods

The race in CA-10 for the seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher features three lawmakers with long resumes at the state level.  And then there’s Anthony Woods, a young man with no prior history in elected office, but festooned with what Benjy Sarlin of The Daily Beast called the best political resume ever.  Woods is an African-American product of a single mother who found his way to West Point and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  He is a two-time Iraq war platoon leader who returned all of his men home safely and received the Bronze Star.  He is someone who, after returning home, was dismissed from the Army for challenging its Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.  But politicians don’t vote with their resumes.  They must have the conviction to vote with their principles.  I actually conducted the first interview with Woods back in April, and since then others have taken notice.  So I thought I’d return to Woods and ask him about some of the key issues facing the Congress in the coming months.  A paraphrased transcript of the conversation, executed last Wednesday, is below.

DD: Thanks for talking to me today.

Anthony Woods: No problem, thank you.

DD: So how’s it going on the campaign trail?

AW: You know, it’s really exciting.  We’re reaching that point where we’re really building some critical mass.  As you know, I did pretty well in the last fundraising quarter, we’re going to have enough money to compete with some experienced lawmakers.  The Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund just endorsed me, which is very exciting and shows their commitment to this campaign.  We just had a great grand opening of our office with 50 volunteers from across the area.  I’m holding a town hall meeting in Fairfield (this already happened -ed.) coming up and we’re really starting to see a path for this to happen.  It’s great.

DD: OK, well let’s start with the biggest issue on everyone’s minds right now and that’s health care.  The way it’s looking, if you’re elected you might get a vote on this.  What are your principles for this debate, and how would you like it to go.

AW: Well, I’ve been getting more concerned every day.  At first, I was thinking that Congress gets it.  They’re going to do something to deal with the health care crisis in this country that I see talking to folks every day.  But as we get into it, they’re moving further and further away.  First of all, they should have started the conversation at single payer so that if they had to move to the center they would have been coming from a better place.  What we have are two issues: access and cost.  Clearly the system right now is broken on both fronts.  50 million people go without health insurance and the costs are skyrocketing.  And the Congressional effort looks to be falling short.  I’m very concerned that there may be no public option.

DD: OK, so will you take a stand right now and say that if the bill before you has no public option that’s available the day it’s introduced, you won’t vote for it?

AW: I don’t know if I’d exactly go that far, but here’s what I would say.  I think there has to be a public option that’s efficient and effective.  And if the Democrats have some bold leadership, they can do it and do it right.  What we need is some competition in the individual marketplace.  If people have to buy insurance, we have to give them a choice that’s affordable.  So that’s my first priority.  And if the bill before me doesn’t have that, yeah, I’d have trouble voting for it.

DD: You say it’s about bold leadership, OK.  Right now, about 90% of all private insurers offer abortion coverage as part of their health care plans.  If a public option is supposed to compete with the private insurance market, doesn’t it have to offer the same kind of baseline coverage that private insurers offer, especially if they are legal medical services?

AW: I think so.  I am pro-choice, and I don’t believe in limiting the right to choose.  And if you’re giving someone health insurance who has had trouble affording it, if they have to make the difficult choice to get an abortion, they need the same kind of resources that you could get on the private market.  So I would agree with that.

DD: OK.  I want to talk about the F-22.  As you know, the Senate just voted down funding for additional funding for F-22 fighters that were designed for the Cold War and have never been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and are apparently vulnerable to rain.  What’s your reaction to that, and then I want to get into the military budget more generally.

AW: I support stripping the funding.  My view is that if the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President all say we don’t need them, we probably don’t.  And regardless of the impact on jobs, we should listen to that.  I think we need in procurement a short-term view and a long-term view.  We should obviously be prepared to defend the country, but we should be prudent with those funds, because it is real money.

DD: The F-22 funding and some other funding may stop, but the military budget will increase this year.  And we still spend more on military activities than any other country on Earth combined.  How can we continue to do that, isn’t it unsustainable?

AW: My deployments in Iraq taught me that the military cannot be the solution to all of our problems overseas.  Because we have this mindset currently, we’ve created a situation where the military is providing resources that other agencies could provide.  We shouldn’t have the Defense Department doing the work of the State Department or NGOs or US AID.  I think if we shift some of that burden, it will actually make the troops safer, because we can focus resources on protecting them and providing them the equipment they need, instead of making the military the sole solution to every problem overseas.

DD: I want to tell you about a story I saw in the Wall Street Journal.  It showed that the top 1% of wage earners in this country, the executives, the wealthy, are now earning 35% of all compensation.  How do you react to that?

AW: Wow.  That says a lot.  You know, these are tough times, and when you see a tiny fraction like that benefiting from the resources of this county, I think it says that they need to sacrifice.  We’re in a situation where we implemented tax cuts in the middle of a war.  We’re trying to figure out how to pay for health care.  And the top 1%, they’re doing pretty well.  I think we need some shared sacrifice.

DD: Why do you think it’s so difficult for Democrats to simply say what you just said in that way?  Even the surtax they’ve come up with in the House to pay for health care is getting dismissed.  Why can’t we just make the case that America is worth paying for, especially for those who use the public commons so much?

AW: I really think it starts with people who are willing to say that.  And it’s why I want to be there representing this community in Washington.  My opponents are mostly the same politicians who we keep sending to Washington again and again, and I think we need someone who isn’t afraid to say that, you know, the country has provided a lot to a small group of people, and they should give a little bit back.

DD: OK, let’s move on.  The foreclosure crisis is still hitting California hard, and so far the solutions that have come from Congress hasn’t worked.  What are some of your ideas to keep people in their homes?

AW: This is something I hear about from people every day when I’m campaigning.  In California, we had a moratorium on foreclosures for a while, and I think that’s part of the equation, but if you don’t provide loan modifications for people, eventually that’s not going to be enough.  The immediate crisis we have is that people are losing their homes, so we need to make the necessary adjustments to allow people to refinance.  After that immediate crisis, I think we have to clean up the regulatory environment, both in the mortgage market and also in banking.

DD: I’ve heard an interesting proposal called “right-to-rent,” where people facing foreclosure can pay rent on the home for a number of years, they get to stay where they are, the banks have a revenue stream and don’t have to deal with a blighted property, and the community gains from not having foreclosed properties on their block.  What do you think of that?

AW: Sounds good.  A lot of people are suffering right now.  And it’s traumatic to uproot yourself and have to leave your community, to have your kids leave schools.  So anything that keeps folks in homes and communities sounds like a smart idea to me.  It’s certainly better than what we’re doing.

DD: But how do we institute something like that when the banks, in the words of Dick Durbin, “own the place”?

AW: That’s a tough problem.  You know, the healthiest banks right now are the ones who separated investment and lending.  And I think that most people I meet are frustrated to see the banks get us to this point.  They want common-sense regulatory solutions to change that environment.  I think the banks will have a real problem on their hands if they keep pushing and pushing, and people don’t see a change in their daily lives while the banks rake in tons of money.

DD: OK, but what’s the theory of change?  How do we get all this done?  When you have a situation where special interests rule and campaign contribution money means more than constituents, how can we fight for progressive outcomes in a Congress that appears to care more about the next election?

AW: Well, I think we have to elect people who are accountable to the ones who sent them.  For me, I will give as much access to everyday people as possible, and let them shape my agenda rather than special interests and lobbyists.  And I think we need to elect more people who have this philosophy.  We’re going to have to do it one representative at a time.  And I think that’s one of the reasons why my campaign is taking off.  We cannot expect different results with the same politicians dealing with the same problems year after year.  So I don’t know if we can deal with everything at once, but we’ll have to do it one representative at a time.

DD: OK, last question.  Obviously, here in California, we’re looking at a terrible budget and lots of structural problems.  What can be done at the federal level to perhaps help the state out of this mess?

AW: Well, just looking at the state budget deal, it’s basically more of the same.  There’s a crisis of leadership in Sacramento, and it produced a budget full of accounting tricks that just kick the can down the road.  It’s clear that the system is broken, and that’s why I’d prefer a Constitutional convention and at the least getting rid of the 2/3 rule for budgets.  California is such an important economy, it’s a big chunk of the country, and when we aren’t doing well, the country suffers.  At the federal level, I think we need smart investment.  The state is a donor state, it doesn’t get back in funds what it pays in taxes.  So I’d like to help reduce that.  And also, we can take advantage of the resources and opportunities in California.  This state has the chance to be a new energy leader, through wind and solar.  And so I’d like to see those kinds of smart investments in California.

DD: Do you support a second stimulus, focused on state fiscal stabilization funds to save those jobs that rely on state spending?

AW: I think we’re having a hard time distributing the funds from the first stimulus.  So I think we have to give it some time to work.  But we are definitely at a crisis point in this state, I see it every day, so I think we need to monitor the situation.  And we have to make sure there’s a safety net in place for the people of California.

DD: OK, great, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

AW: Thank you.