The Public Policy Institute will release polling data today revealing 49 percent of Californians would support a repeal of the 2/3 budget rule. While the question seems a little weighted (it appears they asked voters if it should be reduced from 2/3 to 55 percent, rather than just 50; it also looks like they just asked about the 2/3 rule regarding a yes or no on the budget, not on taxation), this is outstanding news.

It’s striking that so many voters already have an opinion on this issue. The same polling data shows 29 percent of Californians still have no idea how they’ll come down on Prop. 11, the redistricting proposal. Folks are angry out there, tired of seeing services shut down every time its budget season, of obstructionist Republicans using the process as a political tool, and of real people being hurt in the process.

If polling already shows 49 percent in favor of a 2/3 repeal, the rumblings from Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg about placing 2/3 rule reform on the upcoming special election ballot may turn into reality. It should. This is an historic and vital reform that’s necessary for a functioning state government, and there’s no better time than now to take it on.

As I’ve argued previously, by providing voters with a clear distinction between the Schwarzenegger/Republican method of budget-balancing – borrowing, shifting funds, and cutting transit and benefits for low-income people – and a more realistic and compassionate alternative should the majority party, i.e. the Democrats, actually be allowed to do their job, we can win this battle.

It will take work, but the base for reform is out there.

(While we’ve been busy crashing the gates of the party, health care and budget issues are rolling along. This is a good little update. – promoted by bolson)

(I composed this for the broader orange audience – let me know if this is too redundant here)

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, the author of the state’s most popular universal health care proposal, nicely waltzes through the Schwarzenegger plan, and leaves no doubt that it’s a patchwork that won’t, in the end, fix a thing.

Kuehl’s key points after the jump.

1. An individual mandate guaranteed to leave millions without insurance.

The central basis of the Governor’s plan is simply to mandate that every Californian must, by law, carry health insurance. There is no requirement that it be affordable and no minimum coverage. This means that the requirement can be met by a bare-bones policy covering only catastrophic events, with a $5,000 deductible and up to $7500 in out of pocket expenses for all the things that aren’t covered by the policy.

This is not universal health insurance. Think for a moment about automobile insurance. Even before Prop 103 passed, limiting the amounts by which insurance companies could raise your auto insurance premiums to those approved by the Insurance Commissioner, we all had to have auto insurance. Would you call it Universal Auto Insurance? 25% of Californians don’t comply […]

Healthcare wonks immediately notice that those uninsured people will just get paid for, expensively and inefficiently, by the rest of the system, by you and me.

2. The employee mandate is nonsense. It only covers 20% of businesses – those with 10 or more employees – and only asks business who opt out to pay for less that half of the cost of insurance. This ham-handed version of a mandate contains the worst of worlds, it continues to let bad bosses skate, and it encourages small employers to reduce payroll. Worse still, this mandate caps employer expenses but shifts 100% of cost increases to employees.

3. Scope. Unbelievably, the plan does not set a floor for minimum benefits.

4. The cost containment farce. Who needs cost containment when you let insurers cut coverage?

5. Screw the poor. The plan costs many families more than the current MediCal cost sharing system does. Parenthetically, this is just one more body blow to a system that structurally unsound. Now reimbursements are so  low, most pediatricians refuse to see MediCal kids – they can’t, since reimbursements are around half of actual office expenses.

These are the high points, but go read the rest. It’s the template we’ll be using to fend off another Schwarzenegger big budget disaster.