According to the LA Daily News, this is what Daniel Zingale, one of Schwarzenegger's key health care advisers, said about the governor:

"He has an Arthurian style of governing, where he likes people to disagree in front of him."

And Zingale would know, I suppose, having served as chief of staff to Arnold's wife, herself 'Camelot'-born. But clearly, what Zingale is going for here is the idea that Schwarzenegger is the anti-Bush in that he welcomes dissent and a diversity of opinion. You'll recall the myth of Arthur and his round table:

There is no "head of the table" at a round table and so no one person is at a privileged position. Thus the knights were all peers and there was no "leader."

Which indeed does sum up Arnold's governing style: there is no leader.

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More from the LA Daily News:

By stuffing his health advisory team with staffers who represent the often conflicting interests of employers, medical associations, insurers, unions and patient-advocacy groups, the governor has been able to pre-empt a lot of the criticism that could have doomed the plan.

Oooh, wouldn't want criticism. Much better to form policy around being all things to all people, which by definition signifies a lack of leadership, wouldn't ya say?

Not according to the Daily News, which argues that this style is much more conducive to actually getting things done!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care plan was molded by a team of staffers as politically varied as California itself – a fact that could accelerate the ambitious proposal's journey from idea to reality.

Oh really? How's that plan coming, anyway? Has it been introduced by an actual lawmaker in the Assembly or state Senate yet?

{Crickets chirp}

Perhaps it's true that, as the Daily News says:

The rancor that might normally accompany such a far-reaching and expensive plan is so far absent.

Certainly Speaker Fabian Nunez has far more praise for the governor and his healthcare plan than I would like, but the idea that this comity between the parties signifies the absence of politics is naive at best. Arnold was re-elected with 56% of the vote; partisan registration is dropping and decline to states are rising. Cozying up to a popular governor in this political climate IS politics. Does anyone really think it means Nunez will be more likely to support Arnold's plan? Of course not, he has his own, which, not coincidentally, he needs the governor to sign.

Some may argue, as the Daily News does, that the lack of partisan sniping in Sacramento is good for the state, and who knows, maybe it is what Californians really do want. But in the meantime, we are left with a healthcare debate virtually devoid of any debate. What would really be healthy is for politicians in Sacramento to exhibit some real leadership and introduce some bold initiatives into the marketplace so the best ideas, as they always do, rise to the top. There's nothing bold about 'post-partisanship;' it's simply a table without a leader.

(Cross-posted from The Courage Campaign also at DailyKos)

Today, Senator Barbara Boxer held her first oversight hearing of the administration's environmental policy since becoming chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last month.

"EPA has gone too long without meaningful oversight," Boxer said. "I want to send a clear signal to EPA and to this administration: We are watching . . . and no longer will EPA rollbacks quietly escape scrutiny."

Her full opening statement can be found HERE.

Boxer focused her questioning on six recent changes to EPA rules and policy, which seemed to magically appear in December, right before, um, what was it…oh yeah…Democrats retook control of Congress.

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From the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works website, the six changes include:

1. EPA’s December 2006 decision to reverse itself by refusing to extend monitoring requirements for the toxin perchlorate, found in 20 million to more than 40 million Americans’ drinking water.

2. EPA’s December 2006 announcement that it is changing the process for setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), so as to reduce the role of EPA staff scientists and independent scientists, and to politicize the process.

3. EPA’s December 2006 announcement that it is considering eliminating the NAAQS for lead.

4. EPA’s December 2006 decision to reverse its policy on air toxics controls (the "once in always in" policy), so as to allow more pollution.

5. EPA’s December 2006 rule weakening the community right-to-know provisions of the Toxic Release Inventory, by substantially reducing information available to the public about many polluters’ emissions and toxics handling.

6. EPA’s recent policy of shutting down and severely restricting access to its libraries.

From Boxer:

"The pattern of these year-end actions is striking – the public interest is sacrificed, and environmental protection compromised. Who gains from these rollbacks? Just look at who asked for them, like Big Oil and the battery industry. EPA’s proposed actions make it clear who EPA is protecting. The purpose of this oversight hearing is to remind EPA who they are truly accountable to-the American people."

Thwack!

Shockingly, Republicans on the committee seemed unconcerned at best.

Republican committee members attempted to portray Boxer's concerns as trivial and the policy changes as prudent efforts at modernizing and streamlining.

"We are focusing on the wrong things," said Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.

To which Boxer replied:

"I appreciate that you consider these small in comparison to other things," Boxer retorted. "That's why we have two (political) parties."

Hopefully this will be up on YouTube soon. I will definitely post so we can see our great senator in action.

(Cross-posted at The Courage Campaign)

Check out the live webcast of the governor’s energy experts contrasting their boss’s energy plan with the president’s as laid out in last night’s SOTU.

Message: Arnold’s plan = good; Bush’s plan = baaaaaad.

Choice quote:

“The president’s plan does not go far enough and in some cases if not done right would increase greenhouse gas emissions.”

UPDATE: It’s over. Some key differences between the two plans over the flip…

Governor's plan:

• low carbon fuel standard – reduced carbon emissions 10% by 2020.
• no mandate to use any particular fuel. Allows market to decide what is most economical fuel supply for CA. We don’t pick winners and losers, we let the market decide.”
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions 12% by 2017
• tailpipe emissions standards, 26% reduction in gas use by 2017
• not a mandate, includes addressing greenhouse gas emissions

President's plan:

• no cap on greenhouse gas emissions
• mandate to use alt fuels in certain amount.
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by 2017
• could actually get an increase in greenhouse gas emissions

I look forward to hearing an objective perspective. But suffice to say, the governor wants to make it perfectly clear that he and the president couldn't be further apart on energy policy.

(Cross-posted from The Courage Campaign)

This year if we do nothing else, we've got to make sure that we provide heatlhcare coverage to all Californians independent of their income status or their legal status in this country. And we're comitted to making that happen.

       – Speaker of the Assembly, Fabian Nunez

I assure you we will have something out of the Assembly this year…Especially for the children.

        – Assemblyman Mervin Dymally, Chair of the Assembly Health Sub-Committee

This past Saturday, the Speaker of the CA Assembly, Fabian Nunez, held a townhall meeting in downtown L.A. to discuss his "Fair Share Healthcare" Plan. As the term "townhall" implies, the meeting was very much about getting our thoughts and answering our questions. As the Speaker and his gathered panel of experts spoke, it became clear to me just how committed they are to passing healthcare reform this year. Unfortunately, Nunez’s plan as it exists now is quite short on details, as it is still very much a work in progress. To quote the Speaker:

We're gonna look at Sen Perata's plan and look at the good things in that plan…Look at the governor's plan…We got to take the best pieces of every one of these plans and put them together.

Yes, Nunez seems to be embarking on a copy and paste method of healthcare legislation; he will try to devise a plan to be all things to all people…well, everything, it would seem, except single payer.

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Despite the lovefest about how great everyone's plan is, Sen. Kuehl was conspicuously absent from the discussion. Until the Q&A that is. To Nunez's credit, the very first question he took was about Sen. Kuehl's single payer bill that the governor vetoed last year. His response:

Yes I do support Sen. Kuehl's bill but it's not a bill that is going to get the support of both sides. So in the meantime we have 6.5 million people without healthcare insurance. We've got to do something to solve the problem now.

Which pretty much sums up the primary dynamic at play in the healthcare debate in California this year: pragmatism vs. idealism. What are we prepared to sacrifice to make sure that we get the uninsured covered sooner rather than later?

Not surprisingly, uniting divergent interests was a theme of the townhall. It was a post-partisan fest with Nunez even calling the governor's plan "more progressive than mine"  (oy, say it isn't so, Fabian…) It's clear than Nunez desperately wants to be the author of the bill to pass not only the Assembly but also to be signed by the governor and to that end, he is echoing some of the governor's messaging, including calling for bipartisanship and citing the 'hidden tax.' But the realilty is, from what I can tell, Nunez's plan is far better than the governor's, a sentiment which Sal Roselli affirmed when he told us on our recent conference call that SEIU's United Healthcare West is working with Nunez to shape the bill as a potential legislative compromise.

Nunez's plan does have some solid guiding principles, the most overarching of which is that everyone must pay their "fair share," hence the name of the plan; employers bear a burden, so do individuals and so does the state. From a messaging perspective, I think it works because it merges conservatives' concerns for individual responsibility and liberals' concerns for fairness. But it's also inherently non-committal, which perhaps is appropriate for a plan designed to be clay yet to be molded rather than a fully formed bill.

In addition:

– this plan rejects the individual mandate; rather there is an employer mandate under a pay or play model (if employer chooses "pay," they pay a fee as % of payroll (unspecified) into a state-level purchasing cooperative)

– underwriting reform is key; no insurance provider would be allowed to reject someone for a pre-existing condition

– while the ultimate goal is to make sure everyone in the state is covered, the "priority first step" is to cover all California children in households with incomes up to 300% of poverty

Other key issues the townhall addressed, although it's unclear how these would be built into the final bill, included:

– the need for more efficient record sharing; access to electronic medical records will save time, money and lives

– the tragic closing of trauma centers throughout Los Angeles (10 in the last 5 years) as a result of millions of dollars in uncompensated care ($60 million in 2006 alone,) has lead to overcrowding (his hospital was built to handle 38,000 patients a year, it's now seeing 55,000 a year,) which reduces the effectiveness and timeliness of care

– high cost and lack of access to care lead many people to wait to deal with an ailment until it's an emergency, thus necessitating going to the ER; increasing access to preventive care inherently reduces overall costs

– wording can be divisive; small business hates the term "mandate" and labor hates the term "health savings accounts," we have to find a way to unite despte these divides

Throughout the townhall, it was clear that Nunez and Dymally were using the meeting as an opportunity to sort of try out some of their messaging. Here's a rundown of some catchphrases we can expect to hear from the Speaker in the coming months:

"healthcare is a right, not a privilege"

regarding the children of the undocumented: "the only document that concerns us is the one that says they have a clean bill of health"

"everyone must pay their fair share"

"healthcare for all Californians especially for California's children"

And finally, I'll share with you the question I asked and Nunez's response:

Me: Will this bill require 2/3 majority? If so how do you intend to get Republicans on board. If not, how do you intend to accomplish this without raising taxes?

Him: As of this moment we think that this ultimately is going to be revenue neutral legislation which does not require 2/3 majority but we wait to see what the legislative analysts in Sacramento, they might tell us no, it is a 2/3 majority in which case we're going to need Republicans to get this passed. We have got to make sure that we work all of the legislators, Republicans and Democrats, to get them to understand how important it is. And the question about taxes, there is already a hidden tax and this is $1200 that everybody who already has healthcare insurance is paying. How do we reduce that hidden tax or eliminate it altogether and make sure that we cover more people and improve the quality of healthcare for everyone?

Overall, the townhall was extremely educational, both from a fact-gathering perspective as well as sort of seeing close up the politics of the debate. But it was also quite emotional at times as members of the community went up to microphones to tell the Speaker and his panel their stories. We talk theoretically about the uninsured and the fact that the poor don't go to the doctor for fear of cost until finally their ailments reach emergency status, but it is rare to actually see them in person and hear their stories. Watching Nunez's reactions to them, I have no doubt of his sincerity. I did, however, leave the meeting wishing I was more convinced that he was the leader our state requires to tackle this problem. In Nunez I didn't see a progressive leader taking the offense on one of the top issues of our day but rather an adept politician who is approaching the debate in a defensive position, using the governor's frames hoping the governor's popularity and reputation as 'post-partisan' will rub off on this legislation.

As I wrote here, there are benefits to embracing the governor as Nunez is doing and certainly, the governor's pledge to work with Democrats to pass healthcare reform this year is a bit of leverage we can use in our favor. But is Nunez being too passive with this plan? Perhaps it's too early to tell. I certainly look forward to seeing how the legislation progresses as it forms and comes to fruition. Hopefully Nunez will ultimately embrace the substance of progressive reformers' plans even as he embraces the rhetoric of the governor's.

(Cross-posted from The Courage Campaign also at MyDD)

Last week, The Courage Campaign hosted a public conference call to discuss the status of the fight for universal healthcare in California. We enlisted Assemblymember Karen Bass (also our majority leader in the Assembly), as well as Sal Roselli, President of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West and MyDD's Chris Bowers to lead a lively 1 hour discussion on the topic.

Go here to listen to it in its entirety.

What was great about the call was the sense of optimism among all of our speakers. Karen Bass opened by remarking on the great opportunity we have, not only with our new majorities in Congress but also with a Republican governor calling for universal coverage as Arnold Schwarzenegger has done rhetorically if not substantively. But as Roselli made a point of saying, this fact alone really is extraordinary, especially considering the governor has called for all children to be covered under his plan, including children of undocumented Californians. Bowers, in his opening remarks, echoed this sense of optimism, saying:

I am hopeful that what we are seeing is a new era where moderate and conservative Republicans break with their own party to support what can be seen as progressive agenda ideas.

This is how Bowers sees Schwarzenegger's call for universal healthcare and I'd agree.

More over the flip…

Having said that, all of the speakers noted some real concerns with the governor's proposal, namely the central premise behind it, the individual mandate, which would require all Californians to get health insurance as we currently are mandated to get car insurance. Luckily, we have other proposals on the table including, by all accounts the gold standard, Sen. Sheila Kuehl's single payer healthcare bill that passed the legislature last year only to be vetoed by the governor. And since in California a bill that calls for raising taxes, as the single payer bill does, requires a 2/3 majority to pass, the best option for successful healthcare reform through the legislative process will require support from Republicans in the legislature as well as the governor. Single payer does not have that…yet.

Which leads us to the ground campaign of coalition building, grassroots organizing and voter education that SEIU plans to launch later this month called "It's Our Healthcare." A year ago, SEIU declared pursuing the passage of universal healthcare to be their number one priority and set out to do the research that would be needed to begin a fight in 2007. What they learned, as SEIU's Jeanine Rodriguez noted:

People are supportive [of single payer healthcare] up until the end when they start getting real fearful about how reform is going to change their own healthcare.

Which is why SEIU's campaign this year will be one largely focused on educating voters. It also plans to work with legislators on alternative bills to see if they can indeed pass something amenable through the legislative process. Roselli said they feel Speaker Fabian Nunez's bill in particular has great potential. But, again, getting the governor AND Republicans on board is a tall order so if nothing passes this year, they will seek to put an intiative on the 2008 ballot and let the people, by then hopefully warmed to the idea of single payer or something close to it, decide. This, as Roselli said on the call, is their single biggest piece of leverage in this fight.

The Courage Campaign looks forward to joining the SEIU's coalition in their fight for real universal healthcare here in California. If you'd like to find out more about the "It's Our Healthcare" program, you can e-mail Jeanine Rodriguez at [email protected]. We'll certainly keep you updated on the blog and for a more comprehensive look at what is planned for 2007 and beyond, I recommend listening to the entire conference call, which you can access HERE.

(Cross-posted from The Courage Campaign also at MyDD)

Leading up to the November 7 elections, Arnold Schwarzenegger came out strongly against Proposition 90, which you’ll recall was an anti-government regulation measure masquerading as eminent domain reform. In the process he positioned himself to the left of his own conservative Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Tom McClintock, who was strongly advocating FOR 90.

To make this maneuver, as I wrote then, Arnold cleverly used conservative talking points to make the progressive case for NO on 90. In his statement opposing 90, Arnold railed against wasted tax payer money, frivolous lawsuits and more government intrusion into our lives, conservative bogeymen all.

When my Republican uncle told me on election day that he had voted against 90, I knew it was going down and I came to appreciate the potential value Arnold holds for progressives.

More over the flip…

a. When Arnold takes our position he gives it credibility

As a moderate Republican or, as he would call himself, a "post-partisan public servant," Arnold has the benefit of instant credibility when he takes the progressive position, because noone can accuse him of adopting it for political reasons. You've seen this phenomenon with McCain over the last few years; when a Democrat would criticize Bush on the war, for example, he would be deemed a partisan Bush-hater yet when McCain would do it, perhaps even using the same rhetoric, he was labeled serious and independent-minded. It was bullshit but it sure worked against Democrats in 2004. At this point McCain's maverick status has been pretty well debunked but Arnold very much has that aura about him, especially post-November.

We can see this phenomenon in action on the healthcare debate. As many on the left who have plenty of criticism for Arnold's healthcare proposal have said, the mere fact that we have a Republican advocating for "universal healthcare" (no, his plan is not universal and yes it is quite flawed) is huge because it gives the entire premise instant mainstream credibility. Chris Matthews put it well on Hardball yesterday:

MATTHEWS:  You know what?  You know what, fellows?  I think we‘re on the verge of a national health care plan.  You know why I think so?  Because the middle is moving…Romney and Schwarzenegger.  It‘s not just Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

Like it or not, Arnold has had a hand in moving the debate to where it is now. As Juls puts it in the comments at Calitics:

We are staking out the concept of universal health care and mandatory employer contributions as the middle.  That is a huge change from where this debate was last year.  Framing the debate this way helps not just Californians but the rest of the country.

Which leads us to the other way in which Arnold can benefit progressives: the unique way he communicates our position.

b. Arnold normalizes the progressive position by putting it in terms Republicans can relate to

As I mentioned above, Arnold made it OK for Republicans to vote against Prop 90 despite the fact that the talking points for 90 tapped into conservative fears of eminent domain, another HUGE bogeyman of the right. I have no doubt that his framing of the issue as the correct position for those who want to reduce government intrusion in our lives as well as frivolous lawsuits helped push No on 90 over the top in November.

Arnold is doing the same thing within the healthcare debate.

On This Week With George Stephanopolous on Sunday, this is how Arnold defined universal healthcare:

What we want to do is eliminate the hidden tax. Right now the 6.5 million people that are uninsured are being covered by all of us that are insured.

Message: against taxes? against freeloaders? then you should be FOR universal healthcare.

In addition, look at the way he frames his desire to cover children of illegal immigrants:

This is not like I say should we cover them or not cover them. By law, by federal law, it's very clear that no patient can be turned away from an emergency room if they need care…They are by law already insured so let's not argue about that.

I mean, is it me or is Schwarzenegger channeling Stoller?

It's been clear for some time that America already has a universal health care system, it just works through pushing costs to states and localities and shunting people to emergency rooms where they die faster and their care costs more.  Once we accept the framework that American taxpayers already pay for health care coverage for everyone, we just do it in the worst way possible, the argument changes from 'should the government pay for health care' to 'who's ripping us off'.

Arnold's strategy of selling universal healthcare to the anti-tax, anti-freeloader, anti-immigrant crowd has the added benefit of normalizing our messaging for us, which will only benefit the pro-universal healthcare position in the long run. So yes, there is an upside to Arnold. We just need to make sure that elected California Democrats exploit Arnold’s “new middle” messaging when it benefits us and challenge it fiercely when it doesn't.