Author: SacBee — Opinion

As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade.

Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks – the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) – is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare’s $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.

This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Barack Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.

Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, “health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost.” But the bill signed on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.

Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody’s is warning that the Treasury’s AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.

Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.

What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.

But this won’t be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs – which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.

That’s where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude – if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).

It’s the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent.

France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama’s triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan’s strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes – then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.

Obama’s strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first – which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.

And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.

As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work.

But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.

Ultimately, even that won’t be enough. As the population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive, the only way to avoid fiscal ruin (as Britain, for example, has discovered) is health care rationing.

It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea.

In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.

Conservatives and Republicans on Sunday suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

• It’s a good bet that conservatives are overly optimistic about November. By then the economy will have improved, and the immediate goodies in the health care bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

• So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This health care bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson: A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision. Unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President George W. Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise. This would be President Barack Obama’s Waterloo just as health care was Clinton’s in 1994.

Except the hard-liners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53 percent of the vote, not Clinton’s 42 percent. The liberal bloc within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history and the consequences of their 1994 failure.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big.

The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counterproposals to Clintoncare in 1993-94.

Obama dearly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise, without weighing so heavily on small business, without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994-style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to reopen the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to again allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25-year-olds from their parents’ insurance coverage?

And even if the votes were there – would Obama sign such a repeal? We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped.

Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes, it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.

When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail.

If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleep Number beds.

So Sunday’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers now will be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished.

For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

The Democrats were walking around in a state of shock.

Holy cow, they were saying to themselves. We’re not total wimps! We don’t have to sit around and let ourselves be slapped silly by Republican bullies and tea party scaremongers.

One minute they were legislative losers, squabbling and scrambling for the off-ramps. The next they were history-makers, sharing chest bumps and goose bumps at the White House.

How had the lofty president and the wily speaker suddenly steered them off Jimmy Carter Highway and onto FDR Drive? One gleeful and relieved White House aide called the bill-signing ceremony in the East Room, packed with Democratic lawmakers snapping pictures and acting like obstreperous children, “an Old Spice moment.”

“You could see it in their faces,” he said. “It was kind of like that Old Spice ad where the guy smacked himself on the cheeks and said, ‘Wow, that feels good!’ ”

Obama advisor David Axelrod agreed: “People are so used to low expectations around here that the idea that you could do something big and meaningful is exhilarating.”

The Democrats held hands, held their breath and jumped over the cliff – not that it was a radical bill. And, mirabile dictu, nothing awful happened. The markets went up. The polls went up.

Their confidence went up.

Sen. John McCain threatened Democrats, telling an Arizona radio affiliate that “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” from Republicans. So much for “Country First.” But David Frum, the former W. speechwriter, conceded that in trying to turn health care into Obama’s Waterloo – a replay of the Clintons’ disaster in 1994 – Republicans may have made it their own Waterloo.

“We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum wrote on his blog.

Some base members of the Republican base showed themselves as the racist Neanderthals they are.

Protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday called two black congressmen, the civil rights hero John Lewis of Georgia and Andre Carson of Indiana, a racial epithet as they walked by. Another, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, was called that epithet and got spit on. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was called an anti-gay slur.

The anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak was called a “baby killer” by Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer, who says he’s had a “tremendous outpouring” of support for his outburst.

It was disgusting. And for the Democrats who had battled one another through every twist and turn of health care, it was unifying.

Sen. Al Franken, who had blown up at Axelrod after Obama held a televised session with Senate Democrats in February, arguing that the president wasn’t fighting hard enough or strategizing well enough, sent Axelrod a congratulatory note after the bill passed.

“You’re welcome,” Franken wrote. He added an asterisk: “Joke. I used to be in comedy.”

Only a week ago, Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, had written that Obama did not seem happy in his job, that he projected “weariness and duty” instead of the “jauntiness” of FDR and JFK.

But Tuesday, the president was joyous, and that infectious smile so sparsely offered over the last two years lit up the East Room.

Many Democratic lawmakers and Obama supporters were frustrated at the president’s failure to show more spine earlier. As Rep. Louise Slaughter told the New York Times in February, “I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more toughness here or there.”

But at long last, when push came to shove, he shoved (and let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi push). He treated politics not as an intellectual exercise, but a political one. He realized you can’t rise above it. You have to sink down into it. You have to stop being cerebral and get your hands dirty. You can fight fear with power.

The Chicago pol in the Oval has had to learn one of the great American truths: You’ve got to slap the bully in the face. He’s a consensus-building “warrior,” Axelrod boasted to Charlie Rose.

The president, who has been reading Edmund Morris’ “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” has always spoken with a soft voice. Now he’s wielded the big stick.

After years of rancor and revisions, a promising infill project in Curtis Park is only a few final compromises away. But the neighborhood association and the developer won’t get there on their own.

The City Council will need to nudge the bruised egos of developer Paul Petrovich and the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association toward a long-overdue resolution.

Lauren Hammond, the district council member trying to broker a deal, said Wednesday, “There is some movement. And I am hopeful.”

A week from today, the council is to take up the city Planning Commission’s 8-0 recommendation to approve the $200 million-plus project on a former railyard near Sacramento City College. In an unusual move, Petrovich is only seeking the council’s blessing for his master plan; the council would rule later on rezonings and other permits to build on the site.

A workable deal is in the best interests of both sides. Without one, the neighborhood group is hinting it will file a lawsuit, an outcome that Petrovich claims would almost certainly force him to abandon the project, despite having already invested $40 million. Possibly he’s bluffing. Possibly not. Regardless, a lawsuit would likely result in the railyard remaining a wasteland for many more years. It would also reinforce Sacramento’s reputation as a politically treacherous place to pursue infill projects.

As now proposed, the 72- acre development would include 259,000 square feet of commercial space, including shops, offices, a health club and two restaurants; 189 single-family homes and 248 multi-family units; 90 apartments for lower-income seniors; and a 6.8-acre park.

While the neighborhood association and Petrovich have been haggling mostly over the square footage of the proposed retail development, the bigger concern from the city’s standpoint is whether this planned development would blend harmoniously into the surrounding neighborhoods and complement them.

In particular, the City Council needs to ensure that housing and retail is easily accessible by foot, car and bike from the east and west. Petrovich’s plan includes a pedestrian bridge to connect his project to neighboring Sacramento City College. The council should push Petrovich to help finance the bridge, since foot traffic from the college would benefit his tenants.

The other big issue is the nearly 170,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil that remain on the site. Petrovich says he has spent $20 million on the cleanup, but can’t afford to haul away more soil and can’t attract commercial tenants if he buries the contaminants underneath parking lots. Currently, he plans to bury the toxic dirt in a 20-foot-deep layer under the park, covered by a plastic barrier and 2 feet of clean soil.

Both the council and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control need to take a hard look at this plan. While parks have been safely built on brownfields in Richmond and other cities, it is hardly an ideal alternative here.

For one thing, you can’t grow trees in 2 feet of soil – planters are needed. Does the city want a barren park? How about some shade on those 100-degree days?

For all the bitterness, Petrovich’s plan includes some attractive features. Bridge Housing, a well-regarded developer of affordable apartments for seniors, has signed on. Planners say the project generally fits in with the region’s long-range planning blueprint and the city’s 2030 general plan.

With some last tweaks, Curtis Park Village could enrich the city and surrounding neighborhoods. The council needs to make that happen.

Giving away money the state doesn’t have is foolish, especially when it does little to stimulate the economy. State lawmakers, facing a $20 billion deficit, did just that when they overwhelmingly approved Assembly Bill 183, a $200 million tax giveaway for the real estate industry.

Local Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, was one of the few willing to buck the feel-good measure. “I think it’s a lot of money in a deficit situation that doesn’t have the desired benefit,” Niello said.

He’s right. The stated goals of the bill are contradictory. On the one hand, it seeks to reduce the glut of new and existing homes already on the market by giving homebuyers additional incentives to buy.

But, to generate construction jobs, the bill also seeks to stimulate the construction of new homes, which would increase the housing glut.

While proponents claim AB 183 would “get jobs going,” the bill analysis states that “no formal jobs analysis has been conducted.”

Homebuyers already enjoy substantial tax benefits – from the home mortgage to property tax deductions. The federal government recently provided homebuyer tax credits as part of its stimulus plan.

This measure would give homeowners an additional $10,000 credit over three years. California ends up giving money to homebuyers to do something they were going to do anyway.

The sum of $200 million is not chump change. Such money could be used to maintain adult day care services or preserve farmland through the Williamson Act – programs that this page has sought to protect.

Instead of joining that cause, lawmakers end up giving tax breaks at a time California can least afford them.

Conservatives and Republicans on Sunday suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

• It’s a good bet that conservatives are overly optimistic about November. By then the economy will have improved, and the immediate goodies in the health care bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

• So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This health care bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson: A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision. Unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President George W. Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise. This would be President Barack Obama’s Waterloo just as health care was Clinton’s in 1994.

Except the hard-liners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53 percent of the vote, not Clinton’s 42 percent. The liberal bloc within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history and the consequences of their 1994 failure.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big.

The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counterproposals to Clintoncare in 1993-94.

Obama dearly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise, without weighing so heavily on small business, without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994-style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to reopen the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to again allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25-year-olds from their parents’ insurance coverage?

And even if the votes were there – would Obama sign such a repeal? We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped.

Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes, it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead.

When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail.

If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleep Number beds.

So Sunday’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers now will be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished.

For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

The Democrats were walking around in a state of shock.

Holy cow, they were saying to themselves. We’re not total wimps! We don’t have to sit around and let ourselves be slapped silly by Republican bullies and tea party scaremongers.

One minute they were legislative losers, squabbling and scrambling for the off-ramps. The next they were history-makers, sharing chest bumps and goose bumps at the White House.

How had the lofty president and the wily speaker suddenly steered them off Jimmy Carter Highway and onto FDR Drive? One gleeful and relieved White House aide called the bill-signing ceremony in the East Room, packed with Democratic lawmakers snapping pictures and acting like obstreperous children, “an Old Spice moment.”

“You could see it in their faces,” he said. “It was kind of like that Old Spice ad where the guy smacked himself on the cheeks and said, ‘Wow, that feels good!’ ”

Obama advisor David Axelrod agreed: “People are so used to low expectations around here that the idea that you could do something big and meaningful is exhilarating.”

The Democrats held hands, held their breath and jumped over the cliff – not that it was a radical bill. And, mirabile dictu, nothing awful happened. The markets went up. The polls went up.

Their confidence went up.

Sen. John McCain threatened Democrats, telling an Arizona radio affiliate that “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year” from Republicans. So much for “Country First.” But David Frum, the former W. speechwriter, conceded that in trying to turn health care into Obama’s Waterloo – a replay of the Clintons’ disaster in 1994 – Republicans may have made it their own Waterloo.

“We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat,” Frum wrote on his blog.

Some base members of the Republican base showed themselves as the racist Neanderthals they are.

Protesters outside the Capitol on Saturday called two black congressmen, the civil rights hero John Lewis of Georgia and Andre Carson of Indiana, a racial epithet as they walked by. Another, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, was called that epithet and got spit on. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was called an anti-gay slur.

The anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak was called a “baby killer” by Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer, who says he’s had a “tremendous outpouring” of support for his outburst.

It was disgusting. And for the Democrats who had battled one another through every twist and turn of health care, it was unifying.

Sen. Al Franken, who had blown up at Axelrod after Obama held a televised session with Senate Democrats in February, arguing that the president wasn’t fighting hard enough or strategizing well enough, sent Axelrod a congratulatory note after the bill passed.

“You’re welcome,” Franken wrote. He added an asterisk: “Joke. I used to be in comedy.”

Only a week ago, Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, had written that Obama did not seem happy in his job, that he projected “weariness and duty” instead of the “jauntiness” of FDR and JFK.

But Tuesday, the president was joyous, and that infectious smile so sparsely offered over the last two years lit up the East Room.

Many Democratic lawmakers and Obama supporters were frustrated at the president’s failure to show more spine earlier. As Rep. Louise Slaughter told the New York Times in February, “I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more toughness here or there.”

But at long last, when push came to shove, he shoved (and let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi push). He treated politics not as an intellectual exercise, but a political one. He realized you can’t rise above it. You have to sink down into it. You have to stop being cerebral and get your hands dirty. You can fight fear with power.

The Chicago pol in the Oval has had to learn one of the great American truths: You’ve got to slap the bully in the face. He’s a consensus-building “warrior,” Axelrod boasted to Charlie Rose.

The president, who has been reading Edmund Morris’ “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” has always spoken with a soft voice. Now he’s wielded the big stick.

Peter Schrag

Nobody can say that the latest California poll by PPIC, the Public Policy Institute of California, released Wednesday night, includes many surprises. Like other recent polls, it shows tight races for both governor and U.S. senator and dismal approval ratings for the incumbent governor and Legislature.

But it also shows that on immigration, both GOP gubernatorial candidates, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, are on the wrong side of California voters – and by a lot. It shows that all three of the GOP Senate candidates are on the wrong side of the voters on health care.

Poizner, who says he supported Proposition 187, a 1994 initiative that sought to deny public services including schooling to all illegal immigrants, seems to want to drive them all out. Whitman, though somewhat more moderate, opposes all amnesty, “no exceptions,” and would deny illegal immigrants the right to attend public colleges and universities.

But in the PPIC poll, 70 percent say illegal immigrants should have a chance to keep their jobs and “eventually apply for legal status.” Only 25 percent say they should be deported. Even California Republicans seem to narrowly favor some form of legalization. (Among independents, the margin is 68-26 percent).

In the race for the GOP Senate nomination, two of the candidates, Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore, true to their fellow congressional Republicans, vow to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The third GOP candidate in the Senate race, Tom Campbell, a former law professor, while not taking the pledge to repeal the bill, opposes it and confidently predicts that the Supreme Court will find it unconstitutional. (Needless to say, a lot of constitutional lawyers disagree.) The Supreme Court, Campbell said, “has never upheld a mandate” requiring all Americans to have health insurance.

But the poll, taken before Sunday’s vote on the bill, shows Californians favoring the federal health bill 50 percent to 39 percent. In addition, a national poll taken by the Gallup organization after Sunday’s vote in the House shows support for the law picking up 12 percentage points, from 3 percent down two weeks before to a positive margin of 49-40 this week. So support in California now may well be higher than that 50-39.

By a large margin (69-27), Californians also told the PPIC pollsters that they support “requiring that all Americans have health insurance, with the government providing financial help for those who can’t afford it.”

All recent California polls show a close race between Democrat Jerry Brown and Whitman in the run for governor and an even closer one between either Campbell or Fiorina and Barbara Boxer for Boxer’s Senate seat. But the PPIC data on immigration and health care also suggest that on those issues – as on a list of other matters, from party affiliation to Afghanistan and the Middle East to the federal jobs and stimulus programs, to public employee unions and public programs – the races might not be so close after all.

Apart from this election, the PPIC numbers also indicate that on most social issues – immigration, gay rights – California has steadily moved in a liberal direction. For the first time in PPIC’s polls, half of Californians support the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. Independents and Democrats both support it by wide margins and only Republicans oppose it, as they always have.

The poll numbers raise questions about the Poizner and Whitman strategies. Republicans narrowly support some eventual amnesty for illegal immigrants. Consider, also, that Gov. Pete Wilson’s strong support of Proposition 187 and the Wilson 1994 re-election campaign’s anti-immigrant message drove many Latinos into the Democratic camp.

Maybe the most enigmatic of all the candidates in these two races, however, is Brown, California’s attorney general and candidate (again) for governor. On Tuesday he issued what may be the strangest press announcement ever put out by an office like his.

“Thirteen attorneys general, all but one are Republican,” Brown said, “are rushing to kill the federal health care bill by filing lawsuits alleging that the bill violates states’ rights. Here in California, a handful of Republican leaders have followed suit and are asking that I join in.

“Accordingly, I’ve instructed deputies in my office to carefully review these claims in light of applicable constitutional principles. Health care is not the place, with people’s lives at stake, to engage in poisonous partisanship. At this critical time in our nation’s history, we need to come together to forge a common purpose.”

So why, given the moral stricture, didn’t he just ignore it, or tell the 13 other attorneys general to go stuff it or at least wait for word from his deputies?

Californians did a lot at the ballot box to create the mess we’re in. What did we ever do to deserve these people?

• Due to a Washington Post story that was later corrected, Paul Krugman’s column Tuesday misquoted Newt Gingrich as saying that “Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As the Post later noted, Gingrich was referring to Johnson’s Great Society policies, not civil rights legislation.

Political parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.

If you grew up, as I did, with a Hubert Humphrey poster on your wall and a tradition of Democratic Party activism in your family, you recognize the Democratic DNA in the content of the health reform bill and in the way it was passed. There was the inevitable fractiousness, the neuroticism, the petty logrolling, but also the high idealism.

And there was also the faith in the grand liberal project.

Democrats protected the unemployed starting with the New Deal, then the old, then the poor. Now, thanks to health care reform, millions of working families will go to bed at night knowing that they are not an illness away from financial ruin.

Members of the Obama-Pelosi team have spent the past year on a wandering, tortuous quest – enduring the exasperating pettiness of small-minded members, hostile public opinion, just criticism and gross misinformation, a swarm of cockeyed ideas and the erroneous predictions of people like me who thought the odds were against them. For sheer resilience, they deserve the honor of posterity.

Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy – the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.

Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their GDP on health care. We spend 17 percent; that is predicted to grow to 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in innovation, education and everything else. It will not.

With the word “security” engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”

The second biggest threat to America’s vibrancy is the exploding federal debt. Again, Democrats can utter the words of fiscal restraint, but they don’t feel the passion. This bill is full of gimmicks designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but not to really balance the budget. Democrats did enough to solve their political problem (not looking fiscally reckless) but not enough to solve the genuine problem.

Nobody knows how this bill will work out. It is an undertaking exponentially more complex than the Iraq war, for example. But to me, it feels like the end of something, not the beginning of something. It feels like the noble completion of the great liberal project to build a comprehensive welfare system.

The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal ruin. We know what it will take. We will have to raise a consumption tax. We will have to preserve benefits for the poor and cut them for the middle and upper classes. We will have to invest more in innovation and human capital.

Neither party seems to be up to that coming challenge. This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity.

You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had a sold a few of the Mercedeses to pay for it.

Stupak.

Etymology: Eponym for Congressman Bart Stupak.

Function: verb 1: In a legislative process, to obstruct passage of a proposed law on the basis of a moral principle (i.e. protecting the unborn), accumulating power in the process, then at a key moment surrendering in exchange for a fig leaf, the size of which varies according to the degree of emasculation of said legislator and/or as a reflection of just how stupid people are presumed to be. (Slang: backstabber.) Poor Bart Stupak. The man tried to be a hero for the unborn, and then, when all the power of the moment was in his frail human hands, he dropped the baby. He genuflected when he should have dug in his heels and gave it up for a meaningless executive order.

Now, in the wake of his decision to vote “yes” for a health care bill that expands public funding for abortion, he is vilified and will be forever remembered as the guy who Stupaked health care reform and the pro-life movement.

Of all the disappointed activists, Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org and creator of StandWithStupak.com, was perhaps the most demonstrative in his support of pro-life Democrats. He even created a video with a remake of the final battle scene from “Braveheart.” A helmeted British Barack Obama says, “Our cavalry will ride them down like grass. … Full attack!” Whereupon, Stupak, eyeglasses incongruously perched on his blue-painted face, commands his pitchfork army, “Steady. … Hold, hold, hold.”

Alas, Stupak couldn’t hold.

Ultimately, he was weak and overwhelmed by raw political power.

History is no stranger to such moments, but this one needs to be understood for what it was. A deception.

The executive order promising that no federal funds will be used for abortion is utterly useless, and everybody knows it. First, the president can revoke it as quickly as he signs it.

Second, an order cannot confer jurisdiction in the courts or establish any grounds for suing anybody in court, according to a former White House counsel. The order is therefore judicially unenforceable.

Finally, an executive order cannot trump or change a federal statute.

One can reasonably surmise that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, is well aware of the uselessness of his promise. Perhaps this is why he didn’t mention it during the bill-signing ceremony Tuesday.

Stupak, too, knew that the executive order was merely political cover for him and his pro-life colleagues. He knew it because several members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explained it to him, according to sources. The only way to prevent public funding for abortion was for his amendment to be added to the Senate bill.

Clearly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president didn’t want that. What they did want was the abortion funding that the Senate bill allowed.

Thus, the health care bill passed because of a mutually understood deception – a pretense masquerading as virtue. No wonder Stupak locked his doors and turned off his phones Sunday, according to several pro-life lobbyists who camped outside his office.

The ticktock of what transpired during the final 72 hours before the vote will keep political science majors – and psychologists – happily lost in research for years. Meanwhile, whatever Americans feel about the health care bill and its relative merits, they should disabuse themselves of any idea that this was an honest play.

Ironically, the day before the vote, Obama said: “We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.” Democrats were bound to win, all right, but truth and light had nothing to do with it.

Stupak’s clumsy fall from grace is a lesson in human frailty. In a matter of hours, he went from representing the majority of Americans who don’t want public money spent on abortion to leading the army on the other side.

Something must have gone bump in the night.

Whatever it was, demonizing Stupak seems excessive and redundant given punishments to come. Already he has lost a speaking invitation to the Illinois Catholic Prayer Breakfast next month. His political future, otherwise, may have been foretold by a late-night anecdote.

After the Sunday vote, a group of Democrats, including Stupak, gathered in a pub to celebrate. In a biblical moment, New York Rep. Anthony Weiner was spotted planting a big kiss on Stupak’s cheek.

To a Catholic man well-versed in the Gospel, this is not a comforting gesture.

A fire chief in Contra Costa County who retired last year at age 51 with a final year’s salary of $221,000 ended up with an annual pension of $284,000. Another Contra Costa fire chief who earned $185,000 his final year on the job, wound up with an annual pension of $241,000.

As cash strapped state and local governments struggle to pay increased retirement costs, pension spiking has become a focus of public anger.

Public employee pensions in California are based on a retiring employee’s age, years of service and compensation – usually the employee’s final year’s pay. Pension spiking occurs most often when compensation is inflated during the worker’s last year on the job. It occurs regularly – not just in Contra Costa County.

Loopholes in state law make pension spiking easy and legal. Efforts to curtail the practice have gone nowhere in a California Legislature dominated by lawmakers whose campaigns are bankrolled by union members who benefit from spiking.

So at the same time cash-strapped state and local governments cut vital services, lay off some workers and furlough others, they also have increased payouts to their retirement funds. Most recent retirement contribution hikes have gone to backfill the billions of dollars government pension funds lost in last year’s stock market crash. But spiking makes the problem worse.

Two bills, one in the state Senate and one in the Assembly, have been introduced to address spiking. For the most part, they seek to bar unusually high pay raises in the last year of a person’s career that fuel higher lifetime pensions. While that will help, it’s not enough.

The bills, as currently drafted, do not strictly ban the inclusion of unused administrative leave, education incentives, uniform allowances, shift differentials and other types of special payments commonly used to inflate final compensation.

A more straightforward way to stop pension spiking would be to define final compensation strictly as base pay and nothing more.

Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, author of the one of the spiking bills, says he’s seeking to craft a measure that has a chance of getting through legislative committees and to the governor’s desk. He sees his bill as “a good start, a step in the right direction.” It is that, but frankly given the state’s dire fiscal situation, the Legislature’s inability to do more to address an obvious abuse is appalling.

Lawmakers are weighing truly draconian budget cuts. The governor is seeking to eliminate services that help to keep sick elderly and disabled people in their homes. College students face steep fee hikes. Class sizes are growing and transit service has been slashed. Given that and more, to allow top government officials to retire as young as age 50 with pensions fully 30 percent fatter than the salary they earned while they worked is just flat wrong.

Recruiting and retaining motivated college graduates to teach math, science and special education has long been a struggle for schools in troubled, low-income areas.

To recruit such teachers, California depends on the traditional education major at an education school and alternative teacher certification programs for non-education majors. As fewer candidates enter the traditional programs, alternative programs have become all the more important.

One of those is Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits top college graduates who commit to teach for at least two years at low-income schools. It has a tremendous record in California’s largest urban areas – Los Angeles, Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco.

Sacramento is the lone holdout. That needs to change.

Even as it faces a tough budget year, the Sacramento City Unified school board should jump on the opportunity to hire 30 Teach for America recruits to teach math, science and special education in six struggling schools.

The board heard a presentation from Teach for America on Thursday and will make a decision in early to mid-April.

Sadly, some teachers voiced open hostility to the program, and one board member, Diana Rodriguez, suggested it would devalue “teachers in the field.”

That is nonsense. The organization is not a slam on traditional credential programs at the University of California, Davis, or California State University, Sacramento. It also poses no threat to the teachers union, since Teach for America recruits would join the union like any other hire.

The highly selective Teach for America program draws a diverse, talented and committed pool of graduates from across the nation and puts them through a rigorous preparation program.

Schools benefit from having a mix of experienced, veteran teachers – and young, enthusiastic newcomers. And, yes, kids can benefit by having teachers who are science majors, who have received supplemental training in teaching techniques.

Some question the timing of adding Teach for America recruits. But even at this time of layoffs, the district has had to hire 118 math, science and special education teachers – and needs more. Teach for America recruits would fill these hard-to-staff positions.

When is the time right to bring top graduates to struggling schools? Always. Now.

As California struggles through the recession, state lawmakers and others are debating the appropriate role of government to help generate jobs and regain economic momentum. The state government is obviously not the answer to economic recovery, but the government can play an important support role.

Businesses interested in moving into – or out of – California often want to hear from “the state,” be it in the form of permit assistance, access to or information about state incentives, or even a welcoming attitude. But the current economic crisis has made clear that the state cannot provide this service, in large part because the state’s economic development programs are not organized in a way that businesses and cities can use them – or even find them.

When the state dismantled the Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency in 2003, it swept away more than the state’s foreign trade offices that had come under increasing scrutiny. It spread the state’s remaining economic development tools across several departments, agencies, boards and commissions. The state still possesses a large, but largely unknown, toolbox of economic development resources, from job-training funds to gap-financing services. These resources, however, are provided too often on a piecemeal basis, first-come, first-served.

That’s because there’s no single location where the state’s economic development programs come together.

More than 10 advisory panels, with more than 150 combined members from the public and private sectors, also provide guidance on how the state should spend billions of dollars each year on economic development and job-training programs. This fragmentation helps explain why the state government lacks a vision or voice for California economic development, complicating efforts to coordinate activity and shepherd resources, and to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the state’s economic development efforts.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a tremendous salesman for California and its products, at home and abroad, but star power alone cannot bridge the organizational gaps in state government that will become even more apparent under a new governor. The governor needs to leave behind a permanent governance model that can leverage the state’s resources with local, federal and private economic development efforts.

In its February report, “Making Up for Lost Ground,” the Little Hoover Commission called for a new Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

The idea was not to re-create the previous commerce agency or form a large government bureaucracy that would administer new programs. Instead, the commission recommended building on existing resources to make the government more responsive to businesses. Instead of a traditional top-down bureaucracy, a more agile entity is needed that can function as a convener and coordinator.

Creating a pipeline to the governor is a first step. A Governor’s Office of Economic Development, simply named, would make it obvious to outsiders and insiders that it is the authoritative source for inquiries about business growth opportunities.

The office must be invested with the imprint and influence of the governor. It must be a credible networking operation, staffed with experienced and capable professionals. It should be opportunistic, serving as an ambassador, matchmaker, strike team and portal that connects businesses and economic development consultants with local, regional, state, federal and private sector resources.

An existing state entity – California Business Investment Services – should be expanded to form the foundation of a more robust outreach unit that can respond to immediate and emerging issues affecting industries and specific companies.

CalBIS is one of the few entry points in state government for local economic development organizations and businesses seeking state-level assistance, but the five-member staff is buried organizationally in the state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development also must include a policy arm to articulate how the state government views its role in the economic recovery, to establish priorities and begin developing a long-term strategic plan to execute the governor’s vision for economic growth and increased competitiveness. Without a strategic plan, the state’s economic development programs likely will continue to drift, unconnected to, and potentially undermining, other policy goals. Appropriate metrics also must be developed to evaluate programs for efficiency and effectiveness. Such outcomes can be as varied as job creation, personal income growth, the state’s share of patents, unemployment rates or poverty rates.

The new office must establish itself as a useful clearinghouse for economic development and accountability – not a hollow gesture that adds another layer to the government. Ultimately, it should lead to the elimination of boards, commissions and programs that prove to be superfluous, obsolete and ineffective.

An ethic of protecting public lands is a great American idea – as Ken Burns’ recent series on the national parks showed. Now comes along a reminder of what is possible with vision, energy and persistence.

Stewart Udall, who was interior secretary during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (1961 to 1969), launched a new era of conservation in the 1960s. He died Saturday at 90.

His legacy remains with us. During his tenure, the nation gained four national parks – including Redwood National Park on California’s north coast. It also gained national seashores, including Point Reyes north of San Francisco. Add to that new national monuments, national recreation areas, national lakeshores and national wildlife refuges.

But Udall’s legacy is much more than that:

• Wilderness Act of 1964. Udall believed “wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.”

• Land & Water Conservation Fund Act of 1964. This created, for the first time, a continuing source of funds to buy land.

• Water Quality Act of 1965. Udall insisted there was no “divine right” to dump wastes into lakes or streams “because the industry provides jobs.” He argued that “pollution control is a normal part of the cost of doing business.”

• Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. Udall championed this as a counterbalance to the drive to build dams, a lesson learned in the controversy over damming the Grand Canyon.

• National Trails System Act of 1968. The Pacific Crest Trail was one of the first.

In describing the nation’s parks, Udall said that the idea “will flourish only if it is constantly restated and made relevant to the values esteemed by future generations.” He called upon a new generation to take up the mantle of a “new conservationism.” His active life provides the inspiration for a new generation.

At any given political moment, the most important public judgment made about a president is not “liberal” or “conservative”; it is “strong” or “weak.” A verdict of weakness tends to be self-reinforcing. Every stumble proves the narrative, while achievements that contradict that narrative are downplayed or ignored. (See Jimmy Carter.) But the converse is also true. Strength has a momentum of its own.

President Barack Obama possesses a certain kind of strength, which I had underestimated. His reserve is not passionless. During the health care debate, Obama has been tenacious, even ruthless. Following the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts, he reacted with anger and ambition, not conciliation.

He was willing to employ and defend any method – budget gimmicks, special deals, procedural tricks – to achieve his goal. When push came to shove, he shoved.

In the process, Obama has joined the pantheon of progressive presidents: Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson. Each tested the limits of executive power, changed the relationship between citizens and the state, and inspired generations to love or disdain. Obama now belongs in this company.

The politics of health reform is nearly as complex as the legislation itself. To have raised this issue first – before a serious emphasis on job creation and economic growth – still seems a serious mistake. Obama’s progressive agenda did not align with public priorities, which has cost him support. Once he embarked on that agenda, however, abandoning it would have fed a narrative of weakness that could have undermined the entire Obama presidency.

Yet passing this ambitious reform on a party-line vote by questionable tactics may also lead to political disaster. Headed into a midterm election, Obama has managed to alienate many senior citizens, concerned that cuts in their Medicare will be used to finance someone else’s entitlement, and many independents, whose general disgust with the political process has been reinforced. Solid majorities of Americans believe that reform will increase their own costs and reduce the quality of their care. No amount of presidential speechmaking between now and November is likely to change those views.

The immediate political judgment on Obama is likely to be harsh.

The historical judgment is, by nature, uncertain. Obama can (correctly) comfort himself that he has altered the health care debate in America forever. When Republicans eventually return to power, they will attempt to modify the package through the introduction of more market-oriented elements. They will not attempt to abolish health care reform. What Republican would want to campaign on a return to the exclusion of insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions?

But the value of this achievement will be determined by another historical judgment. If this health care reform had passed in, say, 1994, it might have been just another burden borne by a growing economy, and later refined as needed.

Yet if the American government is headed toward a general entitlement crisis, Obama’s health reform will be seen as historically irresponsible. He is adding a massive new entitlement on top of a structure of entitlements that is already precarious. The costs of this new commitment are projected to grow at about 8 percent a year – faster than the economy or tax revenues. And this new entitlement is substantially funded by the easiest cuts in current entitlements – money that now cannot be used to honor existing entitlement promises.

In this historical scenario, the irony will be thick. Having seen Wall Street court disaster with highly leveraged risks and many Americans ruined by overextended borrowing, Obama’s main response to the economic crisis has been to repeat the excesses of both on a grand scale.

It is possible for a president to be strong – and badly wrong.

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Barack Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats.

Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House – a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader – had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Gingrich is wrong about that. Proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect – Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom – but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: On one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that LBJ did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the tea party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.) And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.

Yes, a few conservative policy intellectuals, after making a show of thinking hard about the issues, claimed to be disturbed by reform’s fiscal implications (but were strangely unmoved by the clean bill of fiscal health from the Congressional Budget Office) or to want stronger action on costs (even though this reform does more to tackle health care costs than any previous legislation).

For the most part, however, opponents of reform didn’t even pretend to engage with the reality either of the existing health care system or of the moderate, centrist plan – very close in outline to the reform Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts – that Democrats were proposing.

Instead, the emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.

It wasn’t just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor’s Business Daily declaring that health reform is “affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.” It was wild claims about abortion funding.

It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it, an assurance that older Americans have enjoyed ever since Johnson – whom Gingrich considers a failed president – pushed Medicare over the howls of conservatives.

And let’s be clear: The campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment.

On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin – who was, let us remember, the GOP’s vice presidential candidate – eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Sen. Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue.

On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.” Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: Health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately.

The Senate version of health reform will become law, with an improved version coming through reconciliation. This is, of course, a political victory for Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform.

This time, fear struck out.

The Sacramento region on April 2 celebrates the first five years of its award-winning Blueprint, a voluntary framework for reducing congestion and sprawl. Eight hundred people have signed up for an event to take stock of progress.

The hard-won Blueprint culminated in a map that set an “urban services boundary” to accommodate projected growth out to 2050. Sacramento, West Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, Folsom, Roseville and Rocklin have aggressively implemented it.

But the Blueprint is threatened at its southern boundary.

Elk Grove, which became a city in 2000, is seeking to extend its “sphere of influence,” the precursor to annexation – from 27,000 acres to 37,500 acres. The city proposes to expand south from Kammerer Road and southeast from Grant Line Road, right up to the Cosumnes River and into the floodplain – well beyond the urban service boundary.

Oddly, the city is seeking expansion at a time when growth has dried up. Elk Grove’s residential building permits peaked in 2004 at 4,666 and have been dropping since – to 427 in 2008. Elk Grove was a poster child for a bubble economy over-reliant on housing and has suffered foreclosure rates much higher than the county or state.

This city is in no danger of outstripping Blueprint growth projections. The proposed expansion is unnecessary. A symbol of the folly of expansion is the half-finished, abandoned Elk Grove Promenade mall and the largely unpopulated Laguna Ridge housing area.

Unfortunately, the expansion effort already has gone too far. The Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission hired a consultant to do an environmental impact report on March 3. And Sacramento County, which had rebuffed previous Elk Grove attempts to expand its sphere of influence, has drafted a memorandum of understanding that would accept Elk Grove’s proposed boundary. It goes to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in May.

Elk Grove’s proposed expansion appears to be a developer-driven move that needlessly violates the Blueprint’s urban services boundary and encroaches on the Cosumnes River Basin, the jewel of the south area.

Those who support the Blueprint need to stand up to stop this misguided effort – and urge the Elk Grove City Council to withdraw its expansion application.

The Williamson Act, a linchpin in preserving California’s open space and farmland, is on life support. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature must step up and revive it.

Under the 1965 law, farmers and ranchers who agree to keep land in agriculture or as open space pay property taxes at a lower rate than the full market value. The state then reimburses local governments for the lost tax revenue. About 16 million acres is protected, including 180,000 acres in Sacramento County and 400,000 in Yolo, nearly two-thirds of all county land.

During last year’s budget crisis, the governor slashed $28 million for the reimbursements. If the program is not funded this year, counties might not be able to pick up the slack and it could start an irreversible slide. Many farmers would likely option their land, ensuring it is developed when the economy rebounds.

Sen. Dave Cox, a Fair Oaks Republican, plans to get an audience with the administration to make his case for funding. He notes the Williamson Act has bipartisan support, a rare thing at the Capitol. For that reason alone, a deal to restore funding is worthwhile – if only as a good-faith precedent for more cooperation to break the budget logjam.

The Williamson Act stands on its own merits. California’s budget hell is claiming a lot of victims. It would be a shame if this forward-looking and cost-effective law were another.

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.

Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans – or at least large numbers of them – should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

Republicans have said that they do not want to destroy the private insurance market. This bill not only preserves that market but strengthens it by bringing in 32 million new customers. The plan before Congress does not call for a government “takeover” of health care. It provides subsidies so more people can buy private insurance.

Republicans always say they are against “socialized medicine.” Not only is this bill nothing like a “single-payer” health system along Canadian or British lines, it doesn’t even include the “public option” that would have allowed people voluntarily to buy their insurance from the government. The single-payer idea fell by the wayside long ago, and supporters of the public option – sadly, from my point of view – lost out last December.

They’ll be back, of course. The newly pragmatic Rep. Dennis Kucinich was right to say that this is just the first step in a long process. We will see if this market-based system works. If it doesn’t, single-payer plans and public options will look more attractive.

Republican reform advocates have long called for a better insurance market. Our current system provides individuals with little market power in the purchase of health insurance. As a result, they typically pay exorbitant premiums. The new insurance exchanges will pool individuals together and give them a fighting chance at a fair shake.

Republicans now say they hate the mandate that requires everyone to buy insurance. But an individual mandate was hailed as a form of “personal responsibility” by no less a conservative Republican than Mitt Romney. He was proud of the mandate, and also proud of the insurance exchange idea, known in Massachusetts as “The Health Connector” (the idea itself came from the conservative Heritage foundation). Romney had a right to be proud. As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, he signed a bill that is the closest thing there is to a model for what the Democrats are proposing.

Don’t believe me on this? On the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page last week, Grace-Marie Turner – criticizing Romney from the right, it should be said – noted the startling similarities between the plan he approved and the one President Barack Obama is fighting for.

“Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty,” she wrote. “Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. Many of the uninsured are covered through Medicaid expansion and others receive subsidies for highly prescriptive policies. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and agencies.” She added: “While it’s true that the liberal Massachusetts Legislature did turn Mr. Romney’s plan to the left, his claims that his plan is ‘entirely different’ will not stand up to the intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign, especially a primary challenge.” What does it tell us that Republicans are now opposing a bill rooted in so many of their own principles? Why has it fallen to Democrats to push the thing through? The obvious lesson is that the balance of opinion in the Republican Party has swung far to the right of where it used to be. Republicans once believed in market-based government solutions. Now they are suspicious of government solutions altogether. That’s true even in an area such as health care where government, through Medicare and Medicaid, already plays a necessarily large role.

As for the Democrats, they have been both pragmatic and moderate, despite all the claims that this plan is “left wing” or “socialist.” It is neither.

You could argue that Democrats have learned from Republicans. Some might say that Democrats have been less than true to their principles.

But there is a simpler conclusion: Democrats, including President Barack Obama, are so anxious to get everyone health insurance that they are more than willing to try a market-based system and hope it works. It’s a shame the Republicans can no longer take “yes” for an answer.