With his decision to support new spending for health care and insurance coverage for illegal alien children, Governor Schwarzenegger has in essence poured a vat of honey on legislative Republicans and pushed them into the grizzly bear habitat.
The Republican members of the State Assembly and Senate are now once again the only thing standing in the way of this poor excuse for public policy. And as Karen Hanretty has already pointed out, they will be on the receiving end of relentless attacks through the rest of the budget process.
The governor has also successfully further alienated the vast majority of voters, regardless of party. Perhaps the Governor doesn’t care about public opinion and good for him. But back in the real world where public opinion matters, especially in an election year, his words are problematic.
Compassion is the word that comes mind after several that the G rated nature of the Flash Report won’t allow me to exclaim. I know some will claim that providing health care to all children is the compassionate thing to do. And I don’t disagree. But it is not always the job of government to be compassionate. In fact more often, it is the job of government to be cold and calculating.
I have never been able to reconcile whether the illegal alien flow could be equated to supply-side economics or whether it flies in the face of it, but it is hard to overcome the argument that as you add benefits, financial incentives for illegals they will find out about them throughout the third world and they will come to get their fair share.
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