The Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary e-mail is subscribed to by political and policy leaders all around the country – and the world.  The lead item in the e-mail today is on Governor Schwarzenegger and his healthcare proposal:

Schwarzenegger’s Bolivarian Revolution

The reaction of leaders of California’s political parties neatly sums up the ideological direction of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new plan to provide health insurance to all Californians by mandating that employers provide it or pay a fee of 4% of their payroll into a government pool.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunes was thrilled that a GOP governor had moved so far in his direction: "This is a plan Assembly Democrats could have written — and in a lot of ways already did. I’m pleased to see so much in common with the plan I introduced last month," Mr. Nunes announced yesterday.

At the same time, the Republican Assembly leader, Mike Villines, was holding a news conference to denounce the plan put forward by his party’s governor. "If we put any form of mandate on a business, we are seeing a jobs tax," he said. "This isn’t a philosophical discussion. This is a jobs discussion. This is the difference between employees having a job and a jobs tax that says no to that." Mr. Villines also pointed out that the dramatic expansion of a government mandate flew in the face of the governor’s pledges not to raise taxes.

When Governor Schwarzenegger spoke of being a "post partisan" governor in his inaugural address last week, he must have been referring to his increasing habit of changing jerseys with the Democrats and carrying the ball down the field for them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.